Gospel | Chapter 4: Oct 16, 1882 (Part 2) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much for your time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: mentioned last time, we had read last time at how Sri Ramakrishna famously or infamously had actually slapped Rani Rashmani who was a patron, and he actually the owner of the temple where he was just an humble temple priest, but because she was thinking of something other than God, sitting in the in front of the of Kali.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: and Sri Ram Krishna could just straight away read minds.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she was great enough to immediately understand what was the intent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Under the time, he slapped a very great scholar who was sitting on the bank of the Kanga and telling his beads and but his mind was elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also told you the joke which Swami Atma Priyans actually once said that
[SPEAKER_01]: thank God he is not physically around anymore otherwise our cheeks would be always be red and still stinging it keeps tapping us thinking about something other than God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He pray to God that let me stop this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is my nature becoming like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that nature went away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was told one of the companions of the prophet Muhammad, I think Omar, Omar probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was told to me by a very interesting person.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a Muslim gentleman, a doctor from Iraq and a monk of honor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So interesting that he reads the Quran, firstly, washes his hands in Ganga, water, and then he reads the Quran.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then is very devoted to Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, he's a monk of the order.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he told me some stories about Prophet Muhammad.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of his followers, I think probably Umar.
[SPEAKER_01]: he was a tough guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the prophet instituted these five times you have to offer prayers namans, there's one which is very early in the morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, after some time, enthusiasm way, and some people sleep at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really early.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this Omar, he would go with a branch of a tree or something, run a two with people up to get up and go to go for prayers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It reminded me of Sri Ram Krishna's slapping people if they didn't think about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: this Swami, who's from Iraq and he's a monk of order and a Muslim, and a practicing Muslim also, is how do you reconcile the two?
[SPEAKER_01]: You are sitting every day in front of an image of Sri Ram Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's in Belurmat.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an elderly Swami.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, you're also dedicated follower of Islam.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you reconcile Islam and Sri Ramakrishna?
[SPEAKER_01]: And this Swami, He said, I consider that Prophet Mohammad was also an avatar of Mahkali.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's how He says, this is a divine mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Prophet Mohammad is also an incarnation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what else that Muslims will make up it, but anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, very interesting person.
[SPEAKER_01]: He escaped from Iraq when he was harassed and persecuted by Saddam Hussein.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he went to Germany and became a doctor there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very nice song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned that this state of mind myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said to my cousin, Halad Haru, just see my nature, how can I get rid of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: that means this tendency to hit people were thinking of something other than God.
[SPEAKER_01]: After praying to the Divine Mother for some time with great yearning, I was able to shake off this habit.
[SPEAKER_01]: When one gets into such a state of mind, one doesn't, oh, I haven't told you the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is page 119.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the date is 16 October 1882, 16 October 1882 and page 119 in the middle of the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: When one gets into such a state of mind, one doesn't enjoy any conversation, but about what that about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to reap when I heard people talk about worldly matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I accompanied Matul Babu on a pilgrimage, we spent a few days in Benares at Raja Babu's house.
[SPEAKER_01]: One day I was seated in the drawing room with Matul Babu, Raja Babu and others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hearing them talk about various worldly things, such as their business losses and so forth, I whipped bitterly and said to the Divine Mother, Mother, where have you brought me?
[SPEAKER_01]: I was much better off in the temple garden
[SPEAKER_01]: Here I am at a place where I must hear about lust and gold, but a reduction issue I could avoid it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master asked the devotees, specially Narendra to rest a while and himself lay down on the smaller couch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see in Sri Ramakrishna's life?
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Gospel of Sudan, Krishna, you would see, Incidentally, the talk is about God, day and night about spirituality about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even when there's a little bit of fun, a little bit of jokes and teasing, the conversation is turned around and pointed back towards God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not necessarily that they literally kept on talking about God every time, but everything was centered around God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once I remember reading,
[SPEAKER_01]: Swami Vivekananda was joking and he said, he made some fun about Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Long years after Sri Ramakrishna had passed, this was in the company of monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a young monk or a young devotee didn't like that and said to the Swami, you're joking about Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Swami Vivekananda said, yes, whom should I joke about you?
[SPEAKER_01]: So notice, even in fun,
[SPEAKER_01]: the object of conversation is always centered around spirituality around God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is something well known amongst spiritual seekers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seram Krishna could not tolerate any anything other than God, especially any kind of worldly talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: talk about money or frivolities in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that he was a dry, moralist.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was full of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you will see, as we go ahead, so much joy and laughter and happiness all around him.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like a festival of joy all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not dealing with sensuousness, with greed, with worldly pursuits.
[SPEAKER_01]: In general, it's well known amongst spiritual practitioners that you have to avoid it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often what happens is that it becomes a kind of dry modelizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should not talk about certain things.
[SPEAKER_01]: The core is lacking, when people tell you, don't talk about these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the core of joy, of love, of the feeling, the presence of God, the presence of the divine.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is often lacking.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why it just seems like, oh, it's just dry and moralizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why kids don't take to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, remember, all of these were kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of them who were around Syram Krishna, they were in the late teens or early 20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: and they were so endlessly inspired by him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they were like lit on like a flame of love in them, of divine love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they could see that if you would clearly see, if you start talking about worldly stuff, immediately that joy is lost, that high state of mind, that purity, which enables you to be alive to the presence of the divine, that is lost immediately.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember one of the greatest monks that I've seen in the Himalayas, he would always talk about Brahman, about Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a strict, it was a great non-dualist, but also a devotee, but a strict non-dualist, Advaitan.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you go to him, he would always talk about Brahman about Kār, somebody asked him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, do you do this on purpose?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you do this?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said that
[SPEAKER_01]: that when people visit you, especially some sari, some sari is visit you, worldly people, don't allow them to talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even before they start talking about anything, start talking about Brahman, about God and Vedanta, because otherwise they'll talk about the world and drag the conversation down to the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I also noticed, the first time I went to meet him,
[SPEAKER_01]: We were, of course, monks, another senior monk had taken me, that you are interested in a writer, you know, so we're going to take you to this great monk, and maybe went to meet him and this monk, he was sitting, he was sitting in the corner of a room on the floor, bearing on the online class.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the moment I bowed down, he taught me that, he talks, are they talking about the highest data, about the nature of, of, of one's real self.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, how one is to realize it and how one should live one's life after that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had not even said anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after he had finished, just a few minutes, I felt there's nothing more to be said.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, and I came back and I still have that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've noted down what he said.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was 16 years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: I still remember so clearly what he said.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he said that his guru had told them don't allow people to talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: One senior, very senior Suamita told me that when he monks you get together with monks, don't talk about the three kinds of politics, international politics and national politics and ashram politics, don't talk about the three kinds of things, no, no talking like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Swami Suhita Nandiji, who's now the vice president, he told me this, I joined order under his and I was trained like he lead to a train by him very fortunate.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things he told me, I remember, he was a the Savak.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tend to Swami Primishan Nandiji many decades ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in the Ashram, this was I think in Benaras, which is a big Ashram hospital basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: One day in the evening, after evening, Arathi, he was a young Gremachary, had come back to the room of this elderly Swami, who was not keeping well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm a Gremachary, and he was not keeping well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the other monks invited him that he had a day and night attending to the Swami.
[SPEAKER_01]: So after Arathi, why don't you come and sit with us and have a cup of tea and moody?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the Hindi recall, Murmura, I was buffed twice, yes, buffed twice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and have some of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he went.
[SPEAKER_01]: He told Swami Primashand, you did not say anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, just said, today I'm going to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be a little, I'll come back a little late.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go after RLT and sit with the monks and have a cup of tea and worry and then come back.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next day after the evening already, he did not go.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was sitting with Swami Primeshayanji.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Primeshayanji asked him, won't go for the tea session.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, I told him, no, I don't like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Primeshayanji heaved a sigh of release and said, you are saved.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bengalese, it's a bitch again.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, even the small thing like that,
[SPEAKER_01]: that after evening, aren't even supposed to sit for meditation, you sit together, maybe for 10, 15 minutes, but you'll have the relax, maybe chit chattel it'll, and so I'm permission, and they said, you know, bitch, you're saved.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even with same with from your permission, and so I said, don't you told me all the time, because it was difficult for a young novice like me to tolerate it all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was Vedant or it was devotion, it was Brahman,
[SPEAKER_01]: late in the 90s to I mean this was a story which stayed in my mind late in the night when this old Swami had to go to the bathroom he was like practically blind and so this young novice had to support him physically and take him to the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the bathroom, so I have to mention this holding on to Swaitan and he was a Pramacharya at that time holding onto his shoulder and saying, Understand this well, the Atman is not the five sheets of the body.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's so many times I've heard and this was like 130 or 2 a.m. in the morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was like standing and literally falling asleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll stand and he will not see.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Swami Sri Tanty told us, do you know why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because these things are real to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are so amazing for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they know it can become real for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will save our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will change our lives forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why they're so eager for us to see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was saying in Bengal at holding on to me and at that time 13 a.m. in the right to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk about alcohol which have you understood this well, the five sheets of the body mind and the witness consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here Sri Ramakrishna, because these are elite gentlemen, Calcutta gentlemen.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is in Bhanaras of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were sitting there and they are zamindars landowners.
[SPEAKER_01]: every rich people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're talking about the financial loss in some games and and Sri Ram Krishna burst into tears and said, Mother, where have you bought me?
[SPEAKER_01]: That must have been very embarrassing for his hosts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm reminded of a similar incident that great household difficulty of Sri Ram Krishna, Nag Mahasha, who was in
[SPEAKER_01]: So the, he was so such a charged with God, even the monks, they used to be sent to visit him to see, see, God intoxicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and so there's this particular incident which I found very funny, that,
[SPEAKER_01]: these monks had gone to visit him and after sometime they couldn't take his hospitality because he was literally sacrificing himself just to take care of the two young monks and he did a night concern about their welfare, about feeding them, taking care they realized we have to get to run away from here very fast and so they took his leave and said we're going to go back to Calcutta and they're going to go on the station and he of course went to see them of the station
[SPEAKER_01]: and the train was packed, it was crowded, there was nowhere for the monks to sit and that they got on the train with difficulty and suddenly, Nagmasha burst into tears and wept loudly.
[SPEAKER_01]: saying, Elas, Ayah, Sinner, my faith, this is my faith, the two holy ones, there's no place for them to sit, I could not give them a place to sit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the people around with so I shame that they all got up from their seats and force the two monks to sit down very easily.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was an extraordinary character.
[SPEAKER_01]: She wouldn't, he would see God in everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Bangladesh is a place where there are big rivers and if the cross rivers by boats, they wouldn't allow him on a boat.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason is, he couldn't bear to see the boatman working so hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moment he got on a boat, it was very soon that he would seize the ocean, push up with the boatman and start eroding himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: He couldn't bear to let them do any work for him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the boatman wouldn't allow him on their boats.
[SPEAKER_01]: Late in the afternoon,
[SPEAKER_01]: Young disciple of the master who later became a monk and a name of Swami Adbu Tanda.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rakha, Latu, M, M is the author, Hazra and Priya, Narendra's Brahmo friend were present.
[SPEAKER_01]: The singing was accompanied by the drum.
[SPEAKER_01]: meditate on my mind on the Lord, hurry, the stainless-one pure spirit through and through.
[SPEAKER_01]: How peerless is the light that in him shines, how soul bewitching is his wondrous form, how dear is he to all his devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: After this song, Narendra sang, O when will dawn for me that day of blessedness when he who is all good, all beauty and all truth will shine, will light the inmost shine of my heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so on, I'm not singing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not reading out the whole song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra sang again.
[SPEAKER_01]: with beaming face, chance the sweet name of God, till in your heart, the nectar overflows, drink of it seizelessly and share it with it with all, and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not reading the whole song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Narendra and the devotees began to sing Kitan, accompanied by the drum and cymbals,
[SPEAKER_01]: They move round and round the master as they sang, immerse yourself forever more, oh mind in him who is pure knowledge and pure bliss.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next they sang, oh when will dawn that for me the day of blessedness, when he who is all good, all beauty and all truth, will light the inmost shine of my hearts is repeating that song.
[SPEAKER_01]: At last, Narendra himself was playing on the drums and he sang with the master, full of joy, with beaming face, chant the sweet name of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the music was over, Sri Ramakrishna held Narendra in his arms a long time and said, you have made us so happy today.
[SPEAKER_01]: The floodgate of the master's heart was open so wide that night he could hardly contain himself for joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was eight o'clock in the evening intoxicated with divine love.
[SPEAKER_01]: He pays the long veranda north of his room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now and then he could be heard talking to the divine mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly he said in an excited voice, what can you do to me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was the master hinting that Maya was helpless before him?
[SPEAKER_01]: Since he had the divine mother for his support.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I again want to draw our attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: to the sheer joy which shines forth from this, the feeling of joy in the presence of God, singing the name of God in chanting, in music, in dance, in laughter, and all of it is only one thing, God and God only.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, worldliness is carefully avoided because it destroys this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It pulls us down from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we just preach, you should not talk about worldly things, you should not say this or that, without that core of love, without that core of joy and purity, it becomes dry and boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why, of course, it's not inspiring either for us or anybody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this, who we have met wonderful teachers, many of us have seen some of the seniors, so I'm in great, very spiritual people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen both monks and house orders to
[SPEAKER_01]: and they radiate some of this joy, you feel it in their presence, you see it in their face, in their eyes and it says actually a term called holy envy, holy envy, envy means you are jealous and this kind of jealousy is the only good kind of jealousy that I wish I could have some of that, that's something that you have, I wish I could have some of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: the effortlessly in the presence of such people, your mind is uplifted in the presence of such enlightened people or at least spiritually advanced people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this again and again, and in the case of more very powerful such people,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the circle of influence is quite large.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be the entire ashram.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could just visibly, not visibly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can palpably feel the difference when such a great one is present in that area.
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra, M and Priya, we're going to spend the night of the temple garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: This please the master highly, especially since Narendra would be with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: The holy mother would not.
[SPEAKER_01]: By this name, Sri Ramakrishna's wife was known among his devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: The holy mother, who was living in the Nahabat, had prepared the supper, Surindra, put note.
[SPEAKER_01]: The name by which Sri Ramakrishna addressed Surish Mithra, a beloved householder disciple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Surindra bought the greater part of the master's expenses.
[SPEAKER_01]: The meal was ready, and the plates were set out in the southeast around the master's room.
[SPEAKER_01]: near the east, door of his room, Narendra and the other devotees were gossiping.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were gossiping.
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra, how do you find the young men nowadays?
[SPEAKER_01]: M. So M was a school teacher, remember?
[SPEAKER_01]: M. They are not bad, but they don't receive any religious instruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: But from my experience, I feel that they are going to the dogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: These mocks, cigarettes, indulge in frivolous stuff, enjoy fappishness, play through and do everything of that sort.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've even seen them visiting questionable places.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't notice such things during our student days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra, perhaps you didn't mix with the students intimately.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have even seen them talking with people of immoral character, perhaps they are on terms of intimacy with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is strange indeed, Narendra.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that many of them form bad habits.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be proper if the gargents of the boys and the authorities kept their eyes on these matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were talking thus, when Sri Ramakrishna came to them and asked with a smile,
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra, I have been asking M about the buys in the schools, the conduct of students nowadays isn't all that it should be.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master became grave and said to M rather seriously.
[SPEAKER_01]: This kind of conversation is not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't desirable to indulge in any talk but talk of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are their senior and you are intelligent.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should not have encouraged them to talk about
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra was then about 19 years old and am about 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thus had managed, emphelt, embarrassed, and others also felt silent.
[SPEAKER_01]: While the devotees were enjoying their meal, Sri Ramakrishna stood by and watched them with intensity light.
[SPEAKER_01]: That night, the master's joy was very great.
[SPEAKER_01]: After supper, the devotees rested on the mat, spread on the floor of the master's room.
[SPEAKER_01]: They began to talk with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was indeed a part of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master asked Narendra to sing the song beginning with the line in wisdom's formament.
[SPEAKER_01]: The moon of love is rising full.
[SPEAKER_01]: Narendra sang and the other devotees played the drums and symbols.
[SPEAKER_01]: In wisdom's firmament, the moon of love is rising full and loves flood tide in surging babes is flowing everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: O Lord, how full of bliss thou art, victory and to thee.
[SPEAKER_01]: On every side, shine devotees like stars around the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their friend, the Lord, all merciful, joyously plays with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Behold the gates of paradise today are open wide.
[SPEAKER_01]: The soft spring wind of the new day rises fresh waves of joy, gently it carries to the earth the fragrance of God's love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Till all the yogis, drunk with bliss, are lost in ecstasy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Upon the sea of the world unfolds the lotus of the new day,
[SPEAKER_01]: enshined in blissful majesty.
[SPEAKER_01]: See how the bees are mad with joy, sipping the nectar there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Behold the mother's radiant face with so enchants the heart and captivates the universe.
[SPEAKER_01]: about her lotus feet, bands of ecstatic holy men are dancing in delight.
[SPEAKER_01]: What matchless love, loveliness is hers.
[SPEAKER_01]: What infinite content pervades the heart when she appears.
[SPEAKER_01]: O brothers, says, Pramadas, Pramadas is the poet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Says Pramadas, I humbly beg you one and on to sing the mother's praise.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're on the Krishna saying and danced and the devotees danced around him.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a wonderful description.
[SPEAKER_01]: So before this, you see the discussion and this is a kind of discussion we have.
[SPEAKER_01]: we recognize these, there are certain patterns of discussion.
[SPEAKER_01]: One discussion is how good it was at our time and things are all going downhill now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember this is more than 150 years ago, so they are saying the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you go further back, hundreds of years of discussions among devotees will say that how things will go in the old times and everything is going downhill now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Swami Bhutasya Nandiji, who was the 12th president of our order, and in his late 90s, at that time, I still remember, he would humorously, he would make fun of this, how the old monks sit together and criticize the new Bramacharis, the new novices and shake their heads dolefully, and he would draw all out their words, I'll tell you in Bengali then translate.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, the month will sit together, all elder monks, and you say, I'm already a Shumai, you know, Kong Chilona, and dealing in our time, it wasn't so bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: These young boys, we need to go to ruin, ruin.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every generation thinks that we lived in the golden age, and these new kids are awful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And notice Sri Ramakrishna immediately disapproved of this kind of talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: I apparently the talk is good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about the moral standards of the school boys.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not actually doing anything to enlighten and inspire those school boys.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're sitting and criticizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that criticism is a negative thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does no good to anybody else, and it damages your own, your own purity of mind, the elevation of mind, and it poisons that mosquito around.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll be very kind of the himself, who is the one who's criticizing here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Later on, you would say that never criticize.
[SPEAKER_01]: You lend a helping hand if you can, if you cannot bow down from a distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: But don't criticize it hurts, it hurts, it booms a person's feelings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're not really helping.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always remember Mark Twain's words, he hit the nail on the head, he said, I have seen that those who claim to be found of the brutal truths are often found of brutality more than the truths.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm found of telling the brutal truth, but actually you will like the brutality, it likes to hurt people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Holy Mother also was exceptionally gentle.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have seen in the lives of many of the wonderful Swami's, but it depends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them were very gentle, the way they dealt with others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some were harsh, but even those who were harsh, it came from a place of love.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you felt it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You felt that this person's deeply concerned about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, the scolding though it hurts,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's for my own good, he's pointing out something, he's concerned about my well-being, not concerned about making weaknesses, making excuses for my weaknesses, not concerned about staying in my good books, telling me what I need to hear, and all comes from a good place.
[SPEAKER_01]: When somebody saw him scolding in his harshly, he said for his fellows, I am perfectly capable of giving up my life for them, for their good, and for their own good, if necessary, I'm willing to hang them from the nearest tree.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he see, I'm willing, and he means it, and he says, I'm willing to give up my life for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this, some of the most strict summons.
[SPEAKER_01]: and their willingness to help and go an extra mile for people who are in trouble that is so amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: One story I've heard about, I think Swami Brahman and so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he scored and yet he's also there to rescue help a person who's helpless.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a monk
[SPEAKER_01]: I am sure this one is Ramharand.
[SPEAKER_01]: I could just peel it a little wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Either it's one Ramharand or Swami Shankaranams.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's one Ramharand.
[SPEAKER_01]: The story was this monk was accused of some wrongdoing and he was supposed to be expelled from the order and he so finally the the expansion thing you know the thing has to come from the president of the order that you are
[SPEAKER_01]: So Swami Ramananda called the senior monks in those were in charge of these decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, and do one thing for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of the Ganga, this is Bellurmat.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of the Ganga, make a little hut, a little bit of a cottage.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was puzzled.
[SPEAKER_01]: A little cottage, all right, we'll do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's president of the order, but why?
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, so touching, you know, he says,
[SPEAKER_01]: See, in that hut, I will go and live with that monk.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have your balloon mat, your monastery, your God, all this organization, everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: You stay here.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has nobody else in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll go and live with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you see, how shaken up they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: So immediately they would do the expansion order.
[SPEAKER_01]: President of the order is saying, I'll go over, you send him away.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go over with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: You stay, you can stay, you can have your monasteries and your organizations and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll go and live in that cottage with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And with whom?
[SPEAKER_01]: Monk who is actually accused of some wrongdoing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that is also powerful transformative.
[SPEAKER_01]: We see.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what happened afterwards, but I'm sure at month, when he hears this, he cannot, but, you know, be grateful to this family for the rest of his life and try his best to change himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this I've seen again and again to the extent, even little things, the general secretary of the order, who gets scared of he would get scoldings like this, which we are
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have also seen him who is now the president of our address.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, it's Paranandji.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's telling a young novice who's clothes were dirty.
[SPEAKER_01]: After a lot of scolding also, he wouldn't clean his, I mean, he had to have your dress, hotlessly white as a novice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the general secretary of the order who's now the president,
[SPEAKER_01]: He told me to call that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he said, who told me later?
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a friend of mine, who related the general secretary called me and I was scared because the general secretary doesn't talk to who I am once like us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He called me and he said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Give me your clothes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll wash them and give them back to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's setting right of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: the time of his Sannyasa.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when they when he was allowed to wear the orange groups, it was easier on him because these don't look as dirty as white dust.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Sri Ramakrishna scored them and he tells he makes him responsible.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, you are the senior one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was only 28 years old, but you are the senior one among them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You shouldn't have allowed them to talk about such things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk about God,
[SPEAKER_01]: then there is this beautiful discussion, it is beautiful song, in wisdom's form and in the bowl of love, I put in a chandro with the idea, it is a very beautiful song.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, God is compared to the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the devotees to the stars.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now notice Sri Rama Krishna is standing there and they're singing and playing the drums and chanting and going round and round him and dancing round and round him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the moon surrounded by the stars shining all around it's such a vivid description of actually what was going on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: On every side, shine the devotees like stars around the moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the avatar, the incarnation of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna once said this, he sort of indicated this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, at night in a pool, the full moon is reflected.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the little fish, they think, oh, it's a strange fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: This glowing white round thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they play with it as dawn comes the moon, the reflection disappears.
[SPEAKER_01]: and they are left bereft, you know, they think, where did our friend go?
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, first of all, it's a beautiful example.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, the reflected full moon is so extraordinary.
[SPEAKER_01]: So different from the little fish, so bright and luminous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, it's not really there in the water with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a reflection of something far away in the high sky, far beyond the little fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like God and Avatar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Avatar is in our midst, and yet, really, he's not of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not in Sanskrit or Bengali, the word is the part people.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means off the earth, up the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He appears in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And,
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly one day he disappears and then he feels, where did who had come, who was with us for some time and now who's gone again?
[SPEAKER_01]: The soft spring wind of the new day raises fresh waves of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gently it carries to the earth the fragrance of God's love.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the advent of the avatar, the leela of the avatar.
[SPEAKER_01]: As he plays and sings, it is very loving to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very significant how they say arrangement has been made for feeding them and he watches them with joy as they sit and eat when the devotees were enjoying their needs for their own Krishna stood by and watched them with intense delight.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the fragrance of God's love.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is carrying to the earth, the fragrance of God's love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And till all the yogis, drunk with bliss, a lost and ecstasy, this is literally true.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is happening right there in front of Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are all yogis.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are among them with the ones, the direct disciples, who all became Jeevan Muktas and Lighten beings and we spread this gospel across the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this, you can see it happening in front.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is extraordinary, joy being communicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just gone, it's not just given there in gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: The power is such, it's been transmitted for the ages.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are also feeling it at this distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Transmitted through them to their disciples to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some comments that we see before I go on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody asked, you could see the notes that you took when you met the non-dolist monk in the Himalayas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll dig it out someday and back to show it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Praveer versus says things that you're talking about are very difficult to do for how so just what should we do, who cannot avoid these situations?
[SPEAKER_01]: True, but then you should put dedicates around certain places and times.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the place where I sit and meditate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing else is allowed here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to come here and do anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you're some or daughter wants to come and study there.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, this place is only meant for meditation, prayer, for devotional songs, for devotional reading and that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So place, put a circle around that place, put a circle around times.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the time nobody in the world will disturb me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I am there to take care of all of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to deal with all of your problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there, I've been here for years, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, whoever you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to deal with all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is time for I and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: No admittance to the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: So put a circle around that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe half an hour in the morning or half an hour in the evening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only I and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the time it is how you have to protect, otherwise it will be engulfed by the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then if it's engulfed by the world, you are no use to either to yourself or to the world else.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are upset, if you are, you know, desire as grasping, greedy, annoyed, irritated, what good are you to anybody else?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, good to yourself or to anybody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are calm and centered,
[SPEAKER_01]: And your mind is set on higher things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your very presence will be a blessing to others.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, I will say one thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the hard if one talks about worldly things?
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the Ram Krishna Silvind Rajabhavu and Mathuba, we're talking about money, about the losses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an important thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what drives people's lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Consider the defects of the whole situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Vedanta, they say, those are the actions.
[SPEAKER_01]: We find key finding defects in others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Lampish did not like that criticizing others.
[SPEAKER_01]: But find the defects in worldliness, that only then we will awaken spirituality.
[SPEAKER_01]: That which we choose, the money, the positions, the gadgets, notice how effemeral they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people,
[SPEAKER_01]: People don't want to confront the transience, their familiarity, their impermanence of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Ram Krishna would stress this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would not talk so much about the deeper matter of the falsity of the word.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would say oniktha, impermanent, like the Buddha.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because the impermanence of the word is something which is a fact, you don't have to be a philosopher to grasp it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know that things are born and things die, things are created and destroyed.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know people are born and people die.
[SPEAKER_01]: People change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Children grow up and go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Parents, grandparents grow older and die and pass all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: A growing older day by day, and especially when you look back upon like 20, 30, 40 years of life of past in a twinkling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And our oldest member here, Bill, who's 97, if you ask him, I'm sure
[SPEAKER_01]: When you think about it, you begin to see the effemility of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then to talk about what I ate there, how nice this gadget is or the best deals I got on Black Friday, you may talk about it once or twice, but that is the topic of conversation all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: this party and the next party and the one after that and what this person wore, what that person wore, what this person said to me, you know, that person was insulting, that person was, or celacious gossip like these buys were doing, you know, M and that's not criticizing, that's the great joy in criticizing us.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he said together in criticize us, all of this
[SPEAKER_01]: second that it is deeply unsatisfying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice the joy that they had compared this that these young devotees around Sri Rama Krishna, singing, dancing, talking about spiritual matters, even sitting and eating with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The joy that they had compared it to the joy that we have
[SPEAKER_01]: you go out and have the best cuisine here on Broadway, go out and party.
[SPEAKER_01]: You also can sing and dance.
[SPEAKER_01]: What remains after that after night of dining out and dancing and
[SPEAKER_01]: here a young and inexperience and this is the first time you're doing it in Manhattan, it might be, oh life is really great, but I would, you know, I forgive that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no problem there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to have these experiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you keep doing it one month, one year, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years is something wrong with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that kind of joy and fulfillment is not coming after 30 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, going out and eating and drinking and then dancing in a party.
[SPEAKER_01]: After 30 years really, you've been doing it for every week.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And why repeat it?
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet look at these people, they also ate, they also sang and danced, they also talked about what was interesting to them, which was a spirituality and call, but the joy they had, it sustained them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It inspired them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It made them much better people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It remained throughout their lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: All their lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were great months, great spiritual teachers, and yet they couldn't forget these things which are recorded in the Gospel of Sri Ram Krishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would always refer back to those little few days of joy at the temple of the Kshinishra.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the evening spent with Sri Ram Krishna, the song and the dance and the jokes and the laughter there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somehow there was something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: God was in the midst.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why.
[SPEAKER_01]: and we feel the little drops and little as the spray of that, that, that, that, that huge wave and the reason we are feeling a little bit of a spray here, too, today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the difference between the two kinds of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is called Visayananda, the word, the joy of worldly pleasures, the worldly objects, and one is called Bhajananda, the joy of spiritual practice, of meditation, of talk about God, of Kitan, singing about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just eating in the presence of devotees, sharing food with them, and thinking about God and nothing else is great joy there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is defective job.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll join the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: One psychologist behind, he says, this is a kind of pleasure you enjoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: After enjoying you feel, what's you feel?
[SPEAKER_01]: Your whole psyche has come down to a lower level.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're more disintegrated.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you browse, for example, browse internet one or two hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just randomly without any purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: After that, it was present.
[SPEAKER_01]: One or two hours went away, after that, how do we feel?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not good at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a wasted time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has lowered our mental condition.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has messed up the out piece of mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a good feeling.
[SPEAKER_01]: And same thing is to have every kind of world each time, every kind of world each time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The more satvic joys, the higher just that could be worldly also, but the one characteristic of satvic joys is it takes a little bit of satvic means a pure or higher joys takes a little bit of practice, a pure state of mind, a calm or state of mind and often practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it doesn't take much to go and dance in a discurseic, but it takes a little bit of training and understanding and culture to go into concert and appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: higher literature, dance, you know philosophy.
[SPEAKER_01]: These things have productive a great joy, but there's a higher kind of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in one doesn't feel, you know, disenchanted and, you know, repentant after diving into a profound book and coming out of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You take something out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Mihai Jixen, Mihai, he says that after these joys, you feel more integrated as a personality as if you have been raised to a higher level.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still something, it's still worldly, but it's a much more refined kind of audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's much better.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, Ashokanji says, before becoming a, he used to say to young people who come to become monks to the young boys who would come, he would say that before becoming a monk become a gentle man first.
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard this from senior monks.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does he mean by being a gentle man?
[SPEAKER_01]: be a person of culture, learn something, like maybe learn music, learn, maybe develop a taste in literature or a philosophy, a cultivation of mind to a higher level, and then only spirituality.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, this satisfying nature of world each.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was first of all, a familiarity,
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a femoral impermanent at the end of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You spend years and years pursuing these things, talking about these things, you'll be left with nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a collection of zeros.
[SPEAKER_01]: Life will be gone, health will be gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Years have passed.
[SPEAKER_01]: The people you enjoyed and built up your life with they will be gone either dead or have gone away.
[SPEAKER_01]: old age, illness will be there upon us, and we feel we have gained nothing at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we have gained too little for a lifetime's investment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it is a familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second thing is, it is dissatisfying.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we are talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's entirely dissatisfying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth after all of that kind of determined pursuit of enjoyment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Third thing is, it is binding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once we pursue these things, sense pleasures of any kind, we will see that we are setting into motion, subtle forces.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are forces in our mind, which is subtle, but not less powerful, and they are powerful enough to bind us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later, when we want to break free of them, we find very difficult to break free.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one has to be careful and the thing to do is to minimize these things and maximize study, meditation, prayer, music, all sorts of things which are related to spirituality.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a great force that meaning of the word Krishna for example is the one who attracts.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a great attracting force there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll start working if you give it chance,
[SPEAKER_01]: Why Sri Ram Krishna is so critical about thinking about worldly things, worldly people, worldly things, worldly activities, worldly sensuous pleasures is because it is a femoral, anithium, impermanent, one, second, deeply unsatisfying, deeply unsatisfying.
[SPEAKER_01]: One must appreciate how much effort I am putting into it, what am I getting out of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: And third is, they're binding.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm putting my foot in a trap, they're difficult to get out of, like quicksand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean Lee says, without the worldly matters, wait as the drive for work comes from, what motivates us to work, and wait as the garden toxication comes from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, maybe I'm not making any sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll know you're making perfectly good sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a question which comes up.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, we are motivated by these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why they're making so much effort.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see, Swami, what you're saying will, where will Broadway be?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where will the billionaires row be?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you take out these motivations, the pursuit of sensuous pleasure, the pursuit of food and, you know, Broadway's that.
[SPEAKER_01]: This for foodies, it's for theater lovers and Broadway performances.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's for the people who love designer clothes.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you see the shops and what's going on there, it's for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you take over those things, if you say, oh, I just want to wear simple clothes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever comes food, that's simple and healthy food is enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you're ruining the whole economy.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the answer for that is, those who want to do it, let them do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: don't worry about the economy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been going on for thousands of years, that's because there'll be millions and millions of people who are going through this process of evolution.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you begin to see through it, it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Save yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rise above it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about the economy and the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It people are there to do all these things and have enough motivation to keep propelling the economy onwards and ultimately, God is there to take care of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to think about the gross national product.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, you may say, no, no, I don't mean that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what about the motivation for work in our lives?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many people who come to spirituality, especially for advanced forms like Vedanta, they often report a quick loss of interest in worldly things and diminishing of interest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: The less of non-nonsense, the better of the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the time and energy that saved has to be poured into spiritual practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I mean by that?
[SPEAKER_01]: The four yogas.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to put it in forwards, knowledge, attention, love, service, knowledge of the self of reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we?
[SPEAKER_01]: Most important, that is Ganyoga, training of the attention, that is Dhanayoga.
[SPEAKER_01]: A modern positive psychological will wholeheartedly agree that this is a very critical issue, training of the attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Third, love, love of God and love of human beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the higher the altruistic love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, expression in service.
[SPEAKER_01]: So wherever you are, whatever in whatever field we are, we can be of service to others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just today, I was talking to an old friend of mine, whom I went to school with, and I'm talking to him after 15, 20 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he has built up this huge business in India,
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says, it's not only now that I'm beginning to appreciate the importance of spiritual life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm beginning to appreciate, see now I'm beginning to appreciate that we should, you know, the desire is to do something for others.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have accumulated enough and enjoyed enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember him 15 years ago, he was supposed to visit me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't meet him on that occasion.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in Bellowed Mut, just to give an impression of what a big guy he is in India.
[SPEAKER_01]: He told me, oh, you're in this monastery, where is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: I told him it's just outside Calcutta on the bank of the river Kanga.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll come there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, he'll fly in on his personal helicopter.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, don't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll create a scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in that kind of a rich person, but 15 years later, now he says, I want to do things for other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember another industrialist whom I had
[SPEAKER_01]: seen about, again, about 10, 15 years ago, the sentiment said something that stuck to my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was part of a panel in which I was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, initially, why he got into business was to succeed, to build up his father's business and make it a multinational organization, profits and be very, very rich.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, I did all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But right now, that's not important to me at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now, what's important to me, there are more than 10,000 people working in my organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means more than 10,000 families.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my concern day and night is about 10.
[SPEAKER_01]: So many people and so many lives depend on this organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: What can I do for them?
[SPEAKER_01]: So you see this movement?
[SPEAKER_01]: and higher than this is love, that love for God and love for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And higher than this, higher means subtle influence is the mind which we have got in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the mind which is some sada, it is the mind which is liberation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some sada and mocks are both in the mind are of the mind basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: So nothing changes after enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice, the Buddha, when he talks about suffering of this world, what is the suffering of the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is what things he saw?
[SPEAKER_01]: Old age, disease, death.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what inspired him to leave everything and search for enlightenment, Nirvana.
[SPEAKER_01]: But think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: After becoming the Buddha, did not old age come to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Old age came to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Disease came to him, death came to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So externally nothing will change.
[SPEAKER_01]: What changes in the mind is the mind which is involved in samsara suffering, being propelled from birth to birth and the mind which is liberated, the samsari mind and the Buddha mind, or they can put it in Hindi, the Buddha mind and the Buddha mind, in Hindi, Buddha means food, stupid and Buddha means awakened.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this similar word.
[SPEAKER_00]: training of the mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the third thing, the higher thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most outward is service.
[SPEAKER_01]: Next, in our inward is love, then the even more inward is training of the mind in meditation.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the mind has to be trained.
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, in most, the deepest, who am I actually?
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the key.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the question between the million, the billion dollar question,
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the key.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, service, karma yoga, love, bhakti yoga, training of the attention, raja yoga, and who am I, the knowledge of reality, ganting yoga, which one, all four, with the excess of time and energy, you will have, devote your time and energy for this.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what Sri Lampishna is saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Spend your time in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: There she says, when we are in unpleasant situation,
[SPEAKER_01]: I respond.
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do we see the divinity in such a situation?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it Elana Roosevelt who said in our unpleasant situation?
[SPEAKER_01]: She said, she said, the wife of the terror Roosevelt or frankly in Roosevelt.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think frankly in Roosevelt probably, frankly in
[SPEAKER_01]: that no one can hurt you without your own concept.
[SPEAKER_01]: What your own concept means here is somebody who is nasty to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it hurts you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That being nasty is one side of it from outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: But actual hurt is when your mind cooperates with that nastiness.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're unpleasantness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in an unpleasant situation,
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to train your mind, first of all, not to take the side of the person who is nasty or which you who's being unpleasant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your mind should be on your side example of the Buddha who was some person abused him and he was walking and asking for arms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody made fun of him and abused him and the Buddha said, you have given these to me, this abuse and this ridicule.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do not accept it, so it returns back to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You must be strong enough not to accept completely well-setting and firm in your spiritual conviction.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are far ahead on this road than that person who's being nasty to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why would you pick a fight with the child, even an unpleasant child?
[SPEAKER_01]: So if your mind must be firm, must be strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does not cooperate with the person who's being nasty or the situation which is being nasty.
[SPEAKER_01]: saying, the mind in its own place can create a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, Milton.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one way is, as you have said, not to react or not to respond first of all, then seeing the divinity, seeing the divinity situation is not a question of sentimentality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it must be card, why is God being so nasty to me, nothing that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: seeing divinity and all things is a matter of fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like an imagination or I'm trying hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a sentiment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good, bad whatever they're relying really is the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That God exists in such a done and there is their everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it not true, it doesn't matter what the person is being nasty to me or good to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still such an honor because isn't it existence consciousness placed appearing in this particular name and form, name and form not important?
[SPEAKER_01]: Seeing the divinity in such situations is actually a way, it will reverse it, trying to see the divinity in such situations is the way which will help you not to respond to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: In order to the negative side of it, it will help you to not to react or not to respond.
[SPEAKER_01]: your reaction or response will now be from a deeper level, which is that you see the divinity in the person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can skillfully help, or if you cannot help, at least protect yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: At fix is, isn't that something that only people do of in two school, one person instead of the culprit in this case, Narendra?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sometimes, Narendra was actually the culprit is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if this is a politically correct way of putting it in bengali households.
[SPEAKER_01]: It used to be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure it's not not right nowadays that it's called a daughter to teach the daughter-in-law.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the daughter-in-law comes into the household and the sister-in-law that means the husband's sisters are there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the mother-in-law, so often these daughters in
[SPEAKER_01]: So they have to be taught a lot about how solar work and how that particular family functions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if the mother-in-law who does that use to, now how would she do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's somebody else's daughter after all.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't go out and yell at her and she's more or less like a guest in your house at least initially.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the way they would do it tactfully and it's a sign of affection actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: The mother-in-law would scold her own daughter in front of the daughter in-law.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if the daughter-in-law was intelligent,
[SPEAKER_01]: So, she wouldn't be offended, but you'd get the message that don't do this and don't do that or do it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often, I've seen senior monks do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: As newcomers, sometimes we are not directly scolded.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe another senior monk is being scolded in front of him, but we under the way we get the less.
[SPEAKER_01]: That senior other monk is much more capable of expanding that scolding than us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We might get upset.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, scolding is always, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I am always very grateful for the few senior monks who have harshly scolded me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember the first time I actually was scolded very harshly as a very young Brahmachari.
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, when the head of the month, we came to know that a senior monk had scolded me.
[SPEAKER_01]: His reaction was,
[SPEAKER_01]: very good and I'm so happy today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not good to be praised all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was all of my life a bit of a good boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm the recipient of endless praises, even as in the monastery people liked me immediately and they started praising me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the senior monk was quite unhappy with the situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first time I got a scolding he was relieved.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said it's very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not good to be praised all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Angita says, how would you explain someone at gentle compassion?
[SPEAKER_01]: All forgiveers, Marsha, understanding from the decision to express certain among enlightened story, a total of the decision in modern, saying he will grow and live with that monk who was to express what exactly learning at point of difference?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it depends.
[SPEAKER_01]: That story about the monk with expelled and the Holy Mother actually agreed with the decision.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she agreed with it with tears in her eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, that's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, of that person who would be expelled from the order, she would always have a place in her heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: She would always be there to help him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as far as the order, the organization, the monastery, the purity of that and the discipline of that has to be maintained.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a delicate balance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Siddharth says that one is not harsh on others, who do some, why do some holy men in your extreme as a citizen in order to find a higher knowledge and they're not being harsh on themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have seen this one sign of good status and really spiritual people is always seen this.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are often very liberal with others and pretty harsh with themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the other way around which is problematic.
[SPEAKER_01]: we are endlessly making excuses for ourselves and very judgmental about others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Always willing to believe the worst of others and said, no, but I did this because of such and such reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that because of such and such reasons is true for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody has their own reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: You may not know, I may not know the reason, I'm just seeing it from outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: and so it seems very bad what that person did or said, but they have got some because of this I'm doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, Adhiya also got this because that doesn't excuse it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen this again and again, I'm someone some of the best monks I've seen, very loving, very liberal to others.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even when they are harsh, they do it on purpose and probably hurts them more than it hurts the person they are being harsh towards.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm known so many such examples.
[SPEAKER_01]: but they are very, very strict about themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Srishtamut, TV Shradhan says, the Mahatmaum of Shreem and Bhagavatam is a conversation between Bhagavan and Vyasa and Naradwani, but Naradwani, but Naradwani generally adminishes gently munishes Vyasa for talking about worldly things in his earlier works, despite them being celebrated works like the Mahavatam advice is in the right to text that we'll talk about nursing, except Brahman, the Bhagavatam.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh really, I didn't know about this conversation and the Mahatmaum, that's wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a look there.
[SPEAKER_01]: See.
[SPEAKER_01]: How should one react to post-systemly negative people posing as intellectuals?
[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't it be right to challenge them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Thereby engaging a discussion throw up on all the point list one.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to try it out once or twice, you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: But remember, you will ruin your own piece of mic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so...
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, some of them often appear intellectualism without any grounding in values, it becomes like this and exercise in just criticism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sean Lee says, how can you grow more compassion, generosity and empathy in your heart when you are hurt more.
[SPEAKER_01]: My others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the feeling, but the way I am hurt by these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: That other person also, we get hurt.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are just like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: What hurts me hurts them also.
[SPEAKER_01]: What gives me joy and peace of mind, gives them joy and peace of mind also.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I want to remove my own hurt, if I want to increase my own joy, why wouldn't I want to increase the joy in that person and remove the hurt in that person?
[SPEAKER_01]: The hurt is the same, the joy is the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to increase it here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I joy, I'm a reduced heart pain here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same thing I should do everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a borrowing from a monk who lived 1400 years ago, a great Buddhist monk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bodhicharya Avatara, one of the greatest of Buddhist texts and forgetting his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does anybody know?
[SPEAKER_01]: It is one of the most famous Mahayana texts and the favorite text of the Dalai Lama Shanti Dev.
[SPEAKER_01]: originally, it was in Sanskrit.
[SPEAKER_01]: There he says, beautiful argument that we want to remove pain and we want to increase joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the pain is the same pain everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: The joy is exactly like that everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only our delusion of the ego, my joy, my pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: The ego has nothing to do with joy and pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same pain, felt in the same way, by everybody, same joy, enjoyed in the same way, by everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: So why not reduce pain everywhere and increase joy everywhere?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will work for you immediately.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will reduce your own pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will increase your own joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shanti Deva, bodhicharya Vatara.