[SPEAKER_01]: We're reading the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in my book, we were on page 160.
[SPEAKER_01]: The date is not known.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is just December 1882, December 1882, page 160.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to start reading the middle of the page after the songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: A devotee from Nandan Bagan entered the room with his friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master looked at him and said, everything inside him can be seen through his eyes as one sees the objects in a room, through a glass door.
[SPEAKER_01]: This devotee and his brothers always celebrated the anniversary of the Brahma Samaj at their house in Nandan Bagan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna had taken part in these festivals.
[SPEAKER_01]: The evening worship began in the temples.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master was seated on the small couch in his room, absorbed in meditation.
[SPEAKER_01]: He went into an ecstatic mood and said a little later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother, please draw him to thee.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is so modest and humble.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has been visiting thee.
[SPEAKER_01]: was the master referring to Baburam, who later became one of his foremost disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: The master explained the different kinds of Samadhi to the devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: The conversation then turned to the joy and suffering of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did God create so much suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: M. Once, Vidya Sagar said in a mood of peak,
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the use of calling on God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just think of this incident.
[SPEAKER_01]: At one time, Jengi's Khan plundered a country and imprisoned many people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The number of prisoners rose to about 100,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: The commander of his army said to him, your majesty who will feed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's risky to keep them with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will be equally dangerous to release them.
[SPEAKER_01]: What shall I do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jengi's Khan said, that's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: What can be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: The order was accordingly given to cut them to pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, God saw this slaughter, didn't he?
[SPEAKER_01]: But he didn't stop it in any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, I don't need God, whether he exists or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't derive any good from him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Master, is it possible to understand God's actions and his motive?
[SPEAKER_01]: He creates, he preserves and he destroys.
[SPEAKER_01]: I say to the Divine Mother, O Mother, I do not need to understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Please give me love for thy lotus feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: The aim of human life is to attain bhakti.
[SPEAKER_01]: As for other things, the Mother knows best.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have come to the garden to eat mangoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the use of my calculating the number of trees and branches and leaves?
[SPEAKER_01]: I only eat the mangoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to know the number of trees and leaves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Baburam, M, and Ramdhal, slept that night on the floor of the master's room.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an early hour of the morning, about two or three
[SPEAKER_01]: the room was dark, Sri Ramakrishna was seated on his bed and now and then conversed with the devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: Master, remember that Daya, compassion and Maya attachment are two different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Attachment means the feeling of minus towards one's relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the love one feels for one's parents, one's brother, one's sister, one's wife and children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Compassion is the love one feels for all beings of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an attitude of equality.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you see anywhere an instance of compassion, as in with their struggle, know that it is due to the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Through compassion, one serves all beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: May also comes from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Through Maya, God makes one serve once relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one thing should be remembered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maya keeps us in ignorance and entangles us in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas, daya makes our hearts pure and gradually unties our bonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: God cannot be realized without purity of heart, one receives the grace of God by subduing the passions, lust, anger and greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then one sees God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried many things in order to conquer lust.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was 10 or 11 years old and lived at Kamar Pukur, I first experienced Samadhi, as I was passing through a paddy field, I saw something and was overwhelmed.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are certain characteristics of God vision.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he's light, feels joy, and experiences the upsurge of a great current in once chest, like the bursting of a rocket.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next day, Baburam and Ramdaya returned to Calcutta.
[SPEAKER_01]: M spent the day and the night with the master.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's this portion.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here, Siramakrishna says,
[SPEAKER_01]: So the devotee came from Rangan Bagan, Bramma devotee.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything inside him can be seen through his eyes as one sees the objects in a room through a glass door.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is why used to be said about Sri Ramakrishna that he could see through people, you know, into the hearts of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like something is kept in a glass case, and you can see from outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, Mr. Ramakrishna could look into the minds and the hearts of people and he would know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt this and even know this with a number of senior Swamiji's, a few senior Swamiji's whom I have met.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get the feeling that they understand you very deeply, and they know you very deeply, and actually know things about you, which nobody else in the world would know otherwise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that scary?
[SPEAKER_01]: It might be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, when you meet such people, you realize that there's so much on your side, there's so much your well-wisher.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't really matter if they know what's in your heart and they are there for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had mentioned the Pandit who went to see Sri Ramakrishna and then he did not go finally.
[SPEAKER_01]: He stopped half-page because he thought that Sri Ramakrishna is supposed to know everything in a person's heart and he got scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll know what's there in my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he didn't go.
[SPEAKER_01]: But later he regretted deeply.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think if he had gone, he would have seen there's no need to be scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Ramakrishna is always there to help us, he's not going to reveal our secrets to one and all and then embarrasses in front of everybody, but that's not the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that it's always telepathy or some kind of supernatural power.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, if you are very mature, very wise, you know a lot easily, a lot about people who might not be so mature or wise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like a mother or a grandmother might know what a little child is thinking, what a little child intends to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, and easily, it's very easy to see through a child.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, often such highly spiritual people, they can see through us.
[SPEAKER_01]: They seem to be childlike and innocent.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's quite the contrary.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are wiser than all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Often worldly people think spiritual people are foolish or innocent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rather, it's the other way around.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the spiritual people that advance spiritual advance people
[SPEAKER_01]: Even clever worldly people seem just like children.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can see through often.
[SPEAKER_01]: They will not say anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll play They'll just be childlike But being childlike doesn't mean that they are children.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're actually there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a difference between being childish and childlike childlike is good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Childish is not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he says See is a beautiful description.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sadama Krishna is praying to the divine mother
[SPEAKER_01]: for his devotee.
[SPEAKER_01]: And look at his prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother, please draw him to you to the, he is so modest and humble.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has been visiting thee.
[SPEAKER_01]: So was the master referring to Baburam.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Baburam was present.
[SPEAKER_01]: Young boy, who later became Swami Primaanam.
[SPEAKER_01]: a very pure young soul who became a great monk, one of Sri Ramakrishna's most prominent disciples later in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he was presented that on that occasion and Sri Ramakrishna is praying to the divine mother for him, but look at his prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying that let him have bhakti.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let him be drawn to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the greatest thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: If a spiritual master prays for us, that we may have bhakti in our lives, that we may be drawn to God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing more is necessary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just having bhakti, just being drawn to God, that's all that is necessary.
[SPEAKER_01]: and look at the two qualifications he has mentioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is so modest and humble, and then he says he has been visiting the two things are required.
[SPEAKER_01]: You work on yourself, a self-reformation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I am proud and angry and, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: or greedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: These will be like, you know, a needle, let's cover it with mud.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so then magnet cannot pull the needle.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you polish the needle, if you remove the mud, the magnet automatically pulls the needle.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: The magnet will pull the needle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, this person Baburam is modest and unglu.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means he is, he is not arrogant.
[SPEAKER_01]: he is willing to learn and he is willing to lower himself before God and spiritual teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore God will pull him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, Sri Ram Krishna says he has been visiting the why is this so big?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there must be some effort from our side.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the effort is this young boy is regularly coming to the Daksioneshwar temple to meet Sri Ramakrishna to visit the temple of Kali.
[SPEAKER_01]: This effort is important that it signals our desire for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I am very spiritual.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you doing about it?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, nothing much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't time now.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I retire, I will do something about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, when you retire also, you will not do anything about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the desire must be there and it must be expressed in some kind of action right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: in a reformation of character and being up and doing, trying to realize God, then he explains the different kinds of samadhi to the devotees, and turn to the joy and suffering of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is one of the big questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did God create so much suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: Earlier, if you remember last week, another big question had been taken up, the question of free will.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you remember I mentioned the question of free will do we have free will or not and we had a lot of discussion about that now another question in spiritual life Is the question up evil In theology, this is called the problem of evil So any Religion which talks about God has to explain why there's so much suffering if God exists The problem is this God
[SPEAKER_01]: If God is all powerful, and God is good all loving, then there should not be suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I mean by this is?
[SPEAKER_01]: Suppose God is all powerful, but not all loving, just powerful like a dictator, then there can be suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is there so much, why has God created so much suffering, so God can do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: But if God is good, God wants us, loves us and wants to protect us, then why should God give us suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the big question.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a beautiful example of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Bible, you find the story of the great deluge in the Old Testament, the flood.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Noah's ark, he saved all the animals to buy to and all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same story is found in a pre-judic time, in Babylon, among the ancient Iraq, what is Iraq now, in ancient Iraq.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same story was there in the Babylonian civilization, with one crucial difference.
[SPEAKER_01]: The original, that story, in that earlier form, was that God is all powerful, that's all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing more, all powerful, just supremely powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And God was resting, and the human beings were talking too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God became very annoyed and said, this talkative noisy race, I will destroy them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He sent a flood and he drowned all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's similar, just like Noah, there is a person who takes a built an arc and saves all the animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: All that stood, dust of the story is pretty similar.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is the first form of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same story is found among the Jewish people in the Old Testament,
[SPEAKER_01]: with one difference.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the difference?
[SPEAKER_01]: The difference is God is all powerful and just is not unfair.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just just this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now God finds that the human beings have become sinful and so they need to be punished for their sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, God sends the delude to drown this sinful humanity, and no, I sent to save all animals and all that, you know, everybody in two by two in the arc and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, notice, one difference is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The original, the earlier story was God sent a delude why God is powerful, God can do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second story that needed to justify why God did it, because if God is a just God, there must be some reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: There must be some good reason why God can't behave just like a dictator.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God is just and the human beings deserve to be punished because of their sinful nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so God punished out of justice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in this way, the idea of God evolves, not that God evolves, but the idea of God evolves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the further when God evolves, when you come to the new Testament God is not only God all powerful, not only God is just, but God is a loving God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, just like a parent.
[SPEAKER_01]: So which parent would want the children to suffer unnecessarily?
[SPEAKER_01]: No parent for it, but you, as human parents, you don't have the power to prevent the suffering for the kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would want them not to suffer, but even if you want it, it can't be helped, because you're not all powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But God is all powerful, and God is just, and God is all loving, like a human parent.
[SPEAKER_01]: In that case, why is there suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: You must first appreciate the problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: If God is all powerful, not loving, then it's very easy to say why there is suffering because God created suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because God can create suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: I never said God is good, God can be good, God can be evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: In that case, what will be your worship of God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Your worship of God will be to placate this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, give offerings and sacrifice and make sure God doesn't get angry at you, God protects you.
[SPEAKER_01]: God can get angry at your enemies.
[SPEAKER_01]: but if God is all powerful and just and loving and yet there is suffering, big question comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is there suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: And often this question, why is there so much suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: If God is there, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficiant and loving God, then why is there suffering?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then this suffering,
[SPEAKER_01]: is often used as an argument to show that God doesn't exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: If God existed, this suffering would not be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can clearly see so much suffering is there.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a personal life, in community life, in a national international life, in the human world, in the animal world, in everybody's life, there is old age, disease, death,
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the community life, imagine, the hurricane, it comes to a Florida and so much devastation and loss of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there is war in Ukraine now, and so much different kinds of human suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the animal world, natural world is suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: If a lion catches a sort of deer or cat catches a sort of a mouse, the mouse suffers.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no doubt about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how can you prevent it, but it seems God has designed the world in such a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine, you must say, it's our doing, but if we all became good and we tried our best not to give suffering to others, there still would be suffering due to disease.
[SPEAKER_01]: And natural world, there still would be suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cat will catch a mouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: How will you prevent that?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the food of the cat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is suffering for the mouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the world seems to have been designed to generate suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is called the problem of evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: couldn't God have designed a better world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're seeing it's omnipotent, all powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God could have designed a better world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, so what is the answer?
[SPEAKER_01]: And this question is common.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has come two, three times in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, number of times it has come up, at least twice a thrice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sri Ramakrishna gives different answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: First answer, which is given here.
[SPEAKER_01]: is that we cannot know this mystery.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it is the last answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other answers, we want an answer, which is quite possible that we cannot understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is really no answer to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a fact that God exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so fact that God is all loving and good, is also a fact that there is a lot of suffering in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want an explanation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Answer could simply be that there is no explanation of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is just this way God wants it to be this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's Sri Ram Krishna's first answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: In another place, in this Gospel of Sri Ram Krishna, another person asks this question, the Mukhadji brothers in Calcutta.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this was the first answers Sri Ram Krishna gives, can be understand, you know, it's beyond our understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they do, they are not satisfied.
[SPEAKER_01]: They push for an answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Srinam Krishna gives his next answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, well, it is the Lila of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the play of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the play, there is no rhyme or reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is playing in this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this annoys the gentleman who's asking the question, and he sharply asks that, it is play for God, but it is death for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Bengal, he said, tar tulila Ramra mori.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's death for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Sri Ramakrishna, he says, the last answer, the third level answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lila of God, but debt for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna says, and who are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know who you are?
[SPEAKER_01]: It just puts this question and stops there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the Advaitic Enquiry, which will take you to the fact that you are Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: So from that perspective, actually you do not suffer not as anybody suffered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only that, you and the God which designs this universe, you are one reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I find that Advaitic Answer quite satisfactory.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I will not go into it, but this problem of evil, thealogians, philosophers, and different religions in the world they have tried to answer it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many answers, I have mentioned it earlier, also.
[SPEAKER_01]: Professor Arthar Harman.
[SPEAKER_01]: in his book, the problem of evil in Indian thought.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a professor of philosophy in Hawaii University.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he has given 23, 24 answers to this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not one answer, two answers, 24 answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Ramchishna gave three answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: First, we cannot understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, it is the Leela of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Third, it is who are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You and God are one reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in Professor Herman has collected 24 answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them are from Indian philosophy, but there are many from across the world, from Christianity, from other religions, from the philosophers and literature.
[SPEAKER_01]: So 24 answers, if you're interested, you can look it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the different answers?
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, in Canada, in Calgary this time, I gave a talk on the problem of evil and what is the answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I will spoke about this 24 different kinds of answers to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, we are not going to that now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what did Saddam Krishna say here?
[SPEAKER_01]: M raises this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, is that Vidya Sagar, the great Vidya Sagar was the great Bengali 19th century reformer.
[SPEAKER_01]: an educationist and philanthropist.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in one, once in a mood of annoyance, he said, what's the use of calling on God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jingay's Khan, Plendered a country, and imprisoned many people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number of prisoners rose to 100,000.
[SPEAKER_01]: The commander of his army said to him, your majesty will feed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was key to keep them with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you release them, that's also dangerous, what do we do?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ching is concerned, that's true, what can be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's kill them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had them kill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are 100,000 people that cut two pieces.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what episode he is referring to here.
[SPEAKER_01]: But definitely in Delhi, Timur, Ching is connection never really attacked India.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Timur,
[SPEAKER_01]: He did that about large number of prisoners and outskirts of Delhi more than 100,000 were slaughtered.
[SPEAKER_01]: The point is, many of them may have been praying to God that the same as God didn't save them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what can be done?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have them killed and they were killed, God saw this slaughter, didn't he?
[SPEAKER_01]: But he didn't stop it in any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have often faced this from, say, Jewish people, a Bill Conrad, he asked this question number of times.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Holocaust, six million Jews were gas to death in the concentration camps and the gas chambers of Auschwitz and all the places in Germany.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, how do you explain this?
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the question, and Sri Ram Krishna's answer is first answer, and here he gives this centrally he gives this answer only, it's not possible to understand this, it's not, is it possible to understand God's action is motive, he creates he preserves and he destroys, this is the answer also, the very definition of God is the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of this universe,
[SPEAKER_01]: So, there is a sutra, janma diasya yataha, that from which the birth creation etcetera of this universe take place etcetera, what does etcetera mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Creation, preservation and destruction of the universe, that is Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now you have defined God in such a way that it includes destruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when God destroys now you are complaining, God is just fulfilling his function,
[SPEAKER_01]: and that's how the world is sustained by new creation, destruction of the old and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that can create suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna, so, but what about our question?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should we suffer?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sri Ramakrishna says, I don't need to know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to know.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, I have come to the mango orchard to eat mangoes and eat mangoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's enough for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have come here.
[SPEAKER_01]: God exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have devotion to the feet of God, the devotion, the feet of the divine mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's enough for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why the mother does something this way that way in my personal life also causes suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Ramakrishna fell down.
[SPEAKER_01]: His hand was broken.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he suffered.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later he got cancer.
[SPEAKER_01]: and he suffered.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in my personal life, there can be suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the lives of those I love and nearby, some of them died in during Sri Ram Krishna's own lifetime.
[SPEAKER_01]: There can be death and suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the wider scale, there can be death and suffering for hundreds of thousands and millions.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my point is that I did not know the answer to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: this my only desire is God exists and I love God.
[SPEAKER_01]: This does not mean that he is against helping people.
[SPEAKER_01]: not at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he says, it is a spiritual thing to help people.
[SPEAKER_01]: You notice how closely this is connected, this dialogue, just one paragraph later, he says there is compassion, which makes people help others.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a divine thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, come, it is Daya.
[SPEAKER_01]: Daya, not Maya.
[SPEAKER_01]: If Daya is that which makes you help all beings, and know that it comes from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he carefully points out, with the Asagara had Daya.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, the question is interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: M raises the gives the example of India saga who doubts the existence of God, who doesn't care about God because God is not helping people in suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: But India saga is helping people in suffering.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's God, Daya.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sirm Krishna says, that comes from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that helps, and that makes people help everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he gives Sirm Krishna also gives the example of India saga.
[SPEAKER_01]: and notice how it dies together.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the points Ram Krishna is making is
[SPEAKER_01]: that it doesn't matter if he doubts the existence of God, or it doesn't doubt the existence of God, but it's important that he has, he has Daya.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has great compassion for all beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is that important?
[SPEAKER_01]: Then even if he really doubts the existence of God, very soon he will not.
[SPEAKER_01]: That Daya will purify his mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: When he says later on a little later
[SPEAKER_01]: It, it, Maya keeps us in ignorance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maya makes our hearts pure and gradually untyzed our bonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he says, God cannot be realized without purity of heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: If there is purity of heart, then one sees God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's literally the words which are there in the last but one paragraph.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the new Testament Bible, it is straight away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Blessed are the pure in heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: For they shall see God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the exact language.
[SPEAKER_01]: They shall see God.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's literally, so the God experience of the experience of the divinity and all beings that comes in through purity of heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does not come by solving the problem of evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean one of the 24 different answers which answers good, which answer which one is acceptable, which is more logical, which is less logical.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can go through that exercise.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the use of my calculating the number of trees, branches and leaves?
[SPEAKER_01]: I only eat the mangoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to know the number of trees and leaves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what you are asking is telling M. What is the answer to this problem of evil?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us counting the branches and leaves and that will not solve anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suppose out of the 24 list of 24 solutions provided by Professor Harman, you select one, this is the solution.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what difference did we remove the suffering of people?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will it lead you towards spirituality?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will it give you God realization?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Will it remove?
[SPEAKER_01]: We are suffering also.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he goes on.
[SPEAKER_01]: that Baburam, M and Ramdhal slept that night and then the early hours of the morning, two or three o'clock, the room was dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ram Krishna was seated on his bed and now and then conversed with the devotee.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, my thing, that's strange.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two o'clock in the, through AM in the morning and the Sri Ram Krishna is talking with the devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to be a reading today, early in the morning in our shrine here, Mahapurushma, Swami Shivananda.
[SPEAKER_01]: So towards the end of his life, almost throughout the 90s would not get any sleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would spend in a high spiritual mood, sometimes in samadh, sometimes in bhava.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because he is so ill, the devotees and the monks kept urging him that this sleeplessness is not good for your health.
[SPEAKER_01]: So please sleep a little.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, so Amishivana and this said, we have seen Sri Ramakrishna.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had hardly any sleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we would see him catching a little sleep for half an hour or one hour.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the rest of the time, he would in being some spiritual moods or he would sing and dance or talk to the devotees, give them instruction, talk about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then so Amishivan in the says, these two observe that especially at night,
[SPEAKER_01]: these spiritual moods of how Opsidam Krishna would become more intense.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he would walk back and forth or remain in samadhi or if devotees present like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he would talk to them and so I mean, she wanted to say, sometimes he would wake us up and say, my dear boy, is have you come here to sleep?
[SPEAKER_01]: The days are passing, when will you realize God?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he said, we would quickly set up and start meditating.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's conversing with the devotees.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he picks up the conversation which he'd left earlier in the evening.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, Daya is compassion and Maya is attachment are two different things.
[SPEAKER_01]: The same power of love, affection, but one is Maya, one is Paya.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Maya is the one which is involved with the person, this body mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are mine, my people, and those are not mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is very natural.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is how some sort of functions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says, attachment means the feeling of minus towards one's relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might say, what's wrong with this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Wrong in the sense from Vedantic perspective.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's wrong because it's body centered.
[SPEAKER_01]: You say, look at the example.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the love one feels for one's parents, one's brother, one's sister, one's wife, and children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing at all wrong with it, but it will keep us in some sort, this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Compassion is the love that one feels for all beings in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an attitude of equality.
[SPEAKER_01]: One sign of truth, one sign of spirituality, is equality.
[SPEAKER_01]: To see the same divinity everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Gita, again and again, some of how we are seeing the same dream and everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the nature of the ornament, whether it's a bracelet or a ring or a necklace,
[SPEAKER_01]: It is same goal, literally the same reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is the statue of Durga and Ganesha and Lakshmi and Saraswati or it's the image of the demon Mahesharswara and the lion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same goal or the same silver or the same clay, which is used to make all this same reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an attitude of equality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he gives the example of India Sagar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, it's separated by several hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: The earlier part of the conversation was in the evening.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is in the depth of the night.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sram Krishna says, if you see anywhere an instance of compassion, as in India Sagar, the one who M had said earlier, one who was doubting the existence of God, who said, I don't need God, because God is no good to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Know that it is due to the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Vidya Sagar is Vidya Sagar, due to the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: How is it connected to spirituality?
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, through Maya, one serves one's relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the good of Maya that it makes us do things for others who are related to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But through Maya,
[SPEAKER_01]: One serves everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing should be remembered, Maya keeps us in ignorance and entangles us in the world where as Daya makes our hearts pure and gradually unties our bonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gradually unties our bonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this connection, let me mention the word Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Upanishad, the basis of Vedanta, the word Upanishad, has three, three parts, upper, knee and shut.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shut, the last part, Upanishad, the upper means to approach the teacher or to approach this knowledge, the spiritual knowledge given by the Upanishad, the text.
[SPEAKER_01]: To approach this knowledge, knee means to get clarity and to remove all doubts about it and to know it in reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: has three meanings, Shankaracharya says, Visharana, Gati, Avasadana.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it means it destroys, it takes you, and it loosens.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Shankaracharya explains, the Upanishad is that knowledge, which destroys our ignorance about our real nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: In destroys ignorance about God, that's one meaning of Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: That knowledge, if you approach closely, upper, and get clarity about it, knee, suck is vishara, and a destroys ignorance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, gutty, gutty means it takes you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But gutty can mean two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: A gutty means to realize.
[SPEAKER_01]: And gutty also means to take you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where does it take you to Brahman?
[SPEAKER_01]: to God, to the ultimate reality, take you doesn't mean actually physically take you anywhere or take you in space or take you in time, just you realize you come to realize that you are permanent.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the point why I raised this, the third meaning of
[SPEAKER_01]: well before becoming enlightened, destroying ignorance, realizing I am Brahman well before that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It loosens the bonds of samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says here, Siram Krishna says, Daya makes our hearts pure and gradually unties our bonds.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the bonds of samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is its connection with the purity of mind?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is its connection with God?
[SPEAKER_01]: God cannot be realized without purity of heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: because impurity of heart is that which ties us to the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: The impurities of three kinds, three levels.
[SPEAKER_01]: At its surface level, it is greed and anger and passion, lust, lust, anger and greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come across the lower.
[SPEAKER_01]: So lust, anger and greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the impurity at the surface level.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is there immediately, you can see, it is in our hearts.
[SPEAKER_01]: but at a deeper level, this impurity is expressed in the restlessness of the mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: The mind flickers a lot, it's because of this impurity present in the heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are unable to study it in anything divine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Such a mind may actually concentrate, maybe a good scientist or a good painter might be.
[SPEAKER_01]: or by thought be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But spiritual life is not possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will not settle down on God, Atman, it will not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will flicker.
[SPEAKER_01]: The mind will flicker.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the impurity at a deeper level is this restlessness of the mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the deepest level, this impurity is ignorance.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do not know that very, I do not know what I am, who I am, that's impurity.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a disk which obscures the face of truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: The issue of initiative says here in my in a path 3, in a surface, you have a heat of outcome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there's a deeper meaning there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a general meaning might be, there's a shining disk, which covers the face of truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the shining disk?
[SPEAKER_01]: This word and our attachment to this word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here is my own people, father, mother, husband, by children, grandchildren, my whole of my mind is absorbed their tax reality for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or my property, or my career, money.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the shining disc.
[SPEAKER_01]: But deeper than this has been by children, money,
[SPEAKER_01]: these can be there and the person can still be spiritual, what is at fault is my attachment to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why three Krishna tells Urjuna, in the midstuff, in the midstuff is job as a warrior, you can still be spiritual.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is not with the job, the problem is not with the people, the problem is not with the environment, the problem is in our hearts as the attachment,
[SPEAKER_01]: So, impurity of the heart as a three levels, anger, lust, greed at the first level, restlessness of the mind at the deeper level, and just this not knowingness, this blindness to our spiritual reality, such a person will not believe in the existence of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even if you convince him, we don't particularly, you are pure aware that that will not create much of an impact, it will seem very theoretical and abstract to such a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was also noticing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at.
[SPEAKER_01]: The approach is the same, though the giana and bhakti, it may seem a little different.
[SPEAKER_01]: The language may be different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna from Bhakti perspective, when he is asked, why is there so much suffering in the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna says, that does not interest me.
[SPEAKER_01]: An answer to that question.
[SPEAKER_01]: What interest me is that, I must have devotion and the feet of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have come to eat the mangoes and not count the trees and branches and roots.
[SPEAKER_01]: Same thing, if you ask someone like Ramadamarishi.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is there so much suffering in the world?
[SPEAKER_01]: Will he give you an answer?
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the 24 answers?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you will say, who is asking this question?
[SPEAKER_01]: His point is, when the man goes is finding out the self-realization, the one who's asking the question first, actually, I'm Krishna also gives the same answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: The third answer which he gave to the Mukhajji brothers, and who are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Tumi keh keh.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the same answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is asking this question?
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he goes on, and when I was 10 or 11 years old, his first experience of Samadhi.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is his encouraging the young devotees to meditate, and telling them about his experiences of Samadhi.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is there are certain characteristics of God vision.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once he's light, he's joy, experience is a great upsurge and current in one's chest that is the arising of the Kundalini and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me see if there are any comments before we go on.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the end of this particular section.
[SPEAKER_01]: Priya says, last time you said that both unnecessary hard should one god and mine should be alert or tuned to god.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, compassion will develop the hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: How can the mine get fully convinced?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, convinced is by reasoning, by logic, the Vedanta is for conviction.
[SPEAKER_01]: But remember, two things, that heart is tuned to God, heart wants to God, and the mind is alert.
[SPEAKER_01]: Preserve your convinced or not, your thought of God should be upper-most in the mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the mind?
[SPEAKER_01]: The mind is a series of gritties, one after another.
[SPEAKER_01]: It thinks about things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what it thinks about, is it the world or is it God?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the yogi tries to make it more and more about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramah says, does God choose to be loving even though he is the power behind both love and hatred?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that God just chooses to be loving.
[SPEAKER_01]: The very nature of God is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you say, such ananda, the expression of ananda is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it's not that God has love and hatred and uses hatred to love towards us, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: From a birthday perspective or from a personal God perspective, a second abrahman, God is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: God cannot but love because we are all one with God, you know, it's like God has a deep
[SPEAKER_01]: One day, I was walking in front of the Marsha Sharda's temple in Beludmat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking of this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are thinking about God and trying to realise God.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what does God think about us?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the God's perspective about us?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is God's point of view?
[SPEAKER_01]: What will God feel about us?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's this question came.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I was walking in front of Marsha Sharda's temple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Immediately Nansal came to my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: God will think of us as his her children.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are the children of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how can you have nothing, anything but love for your children?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you had the greatest well-wishard for your children?
[SPEAKER_01]: You want nothing but the best for your children?
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly God, even more than, you know, some of the direct disciples of Sri Ram Krishna would say, Sri Ram Krishna, the best way to describe him was love, L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E, love personified.
[SPEAKER_01]: Vivekananda defined Sri Ram Krishna as love personified.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we read about Saddam Krishna, he seems to be a great bhakta, he seems to be a great mystic, having so many visions and experiences, tremendously wise teacher, and everybody says he's an avatar, so we accept he's an avatar, but that L.O.V.
[SPEAKER_01]: personified, love personified, those who were the closest disciples, they all said at once, I mean all, I had the same opinion, they had the same experiences
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them says, we did not know all these things at first, when we went to him with a young boy, what pulled us to him was his love, another one says that Sri Ramakrishna was so amazed to see Sri Ramakrishna loved us more than our own parents.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was so amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sri Ramakrishna asked somebody to help him, and he was a proud young man, and so he said, why are you asking other people for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sri Ramakrishna said, for you, I am ready to go from house to house and big.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was the kind of love that he had for, and everybody felt like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just like Narayana, all the disciples,
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, how a middle-aged bearded man, your guru can be your mother, but they felt that it's just like my mother, it's just my mother.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the God's very nature is not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, Probeer Babu, did you want to ask something?
[SPEAKER_00]: a marriage, you know, you know, tell us stories sometimes about this blanket was floating in the water and the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he said, you know, he got rid of the blanket, but the blanket is holding him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what is happening to most of us in a song, sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is the best way?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I sometimes, if I don't, I have to do things that I don't want to
[SPEAKER_00]: But I sometimes say, okay, offering it to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is the best way to handle this?
[SPEAKER_01]: To best ways the name of God, the mantra which we do for the japa and thinking about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thinking about someone like Sri Ramakrishna and when we had what we were doing right now, it is having an effect not only our minds on our subconscious mind also, it's having an effect on our heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is impressing upon our heart,
[SPEAKER_01]: the power of white ragged.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is sort of in a smooth and automatic way it is coming into our hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if I don't want to do something, let's say I'm doing something that I'd rather go and read something.
[SPEAKER_01]: The very fact that I don't want to do it that itself is a blessing from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The worst situation is that when I want to do something worldly,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know this is worldly, this will be of no good to me, this will just involve me more in some sort of a, this is a desire in my heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: A better situation is that desire is not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But still, because of the force of circumstances situation, it is like a duty or something expected of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There it will not bind you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will not bind you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the best way to create this detachment is to drive our worldliness is the company of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: One Sadhu Nutarakhand said, somebody asked him a similar question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he said that in Hindi I'll tell you, and then translate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gundo said Chutkara, Kaise Emile, Daroga say Yari Bana,
[SPEAKER_01]: He says, how will you get freedom from the company of crooks, thugs?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, strike up a friendship with the sheriff, hang out with the sheriff with the police chief and then the crooks will run away by themselves, they won't come near you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, hang out with God, so the worldiness will run away from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then this is actually an answer to this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does one get a sense of detachment?
[SPEAKER_01]: This one.
[SPEAKER_01]: A company of God, a company of Sadhusanga, a company of those who are detached.
[SPEAKER_01]: Paru's is, can you repeat the three meanings of Shadh in Upanishad?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I'll read it out from the Kato Upanishad Bhashya.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Kato Upanishad Bhashya, Shankaracharya explains the meaning of Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in the Katoopanishad Bhastya, at the very beginning, in the introduction to the commentary on Katoopanishad, Azishankarya Charya explains what is an openishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, he says, this is openishad Shabh Dana, with the outchad, and I'm just jumping ahead and reading out the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how does it mean knowledge?
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, upper sum gummea.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means when you approach this knowledge, how do you approach the knowledge?
[SPEAKER_01]: You obviously approach the text and the teacher.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you come to, you sign up for the Upanishad classes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you're approaching the knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, turn nish tata ya nish jaye nashila yanti.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, then by you cultivate this knowledge, how do you cultivate it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Shavanam, Manana, Nidhidhya, and what do you get out of it?
[SPEAKER_01]: You get Nishchaya, clarity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Knowledge not without.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may be it means this or I thought it meant that now I don't, I'm not very sure what it means.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that kind of knowledge.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very clear that I am awareness.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what the Upanishad is telling me, that's so clear to me, that the sun is shining as clear as that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, then he says, samsara, be just your Visyaranari, Hingsanad, Vinashanad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, it destroys the beach of samsara, this is ignorance or Maya, that is one meaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another meaning is, so the very beginning has said, Sadeer, Dhatur, Visharana, Bharti, Avasada, Nathasya, Nip, Upani, Purvasya, Quippati, Anthasya, Rupam, Upanishad, because given a derivation of the term Upanishad, the word, the root, Sath, Sath, has three meanings,
[SPEAKER_01]: then, uh, gutty to take you somewhere or to make you get something, that you have to attain something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, our sadhana, to, to loosen three meanings of the term of the root sath.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is he says, it is Upanipurvas, it is preceded by Upa and Nih.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Upa means
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the first meaning of Upanishad is that knowledge which destroys the bonds of samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second meaning he says, Param-Bramha-Gamayati-Etti-Bramha-Gamayati-Tuena, Yogad-Bramha-Bidya-Upupanishad, that which helps you to attain, that which takes you to Brahman or makes you attain or realize Brahman.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: What will make you realize Brahman?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because Brahman is your own nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing that can make you realize Brahman is knowledge.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that knowledge, which makes you realize Brahman, that is called Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Brahman with the Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it gives another meaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: because here he has given a technical meaning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in Kato Upanishad, apart from direct realization, I am Brahman, it says secondary meaning is given that you go to Brahma-Loka, the sequential liberation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you get liberation from there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Upanishad will teach you how to do that also.
[SPEAKER_01]: In case you do not realize that you are Brahman in this very life itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did exactly the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the connection between this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did exactly the same thing in the age chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.
[SPEAKER_01]: which showed you the sequential liberation, Kramamukti also.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what is the technical meaning of loosening the bonds of Samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: But quite apart from that, in general, spirituality helps us to loosen the bonds of Samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you do karma yoga,
[SPEAKER_01]: If you meditate, and if you practice devotion to God, and you do self enquiry, who am I enquiry?
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this, well before it gives you boxa, well before it freezes you from samsara, it will loosen the bonds of samsara, you will not suffer so much, you will not be bound so much in samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though you are not at free, but still it has a progressive cumulative effect.
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are the three meanings of shat in Upanishad.
[SPEAKER_01]: destruction of ignorance, attainment of Brahman and loosening the bond subsums are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kiran says, in one of his books, Rinpoche says, praying for the welfare of all beings during meditation, accelerates one's progress on the path of enlightenment, which Rinpoche, all of this,
[SPEAKER_01]: Great Tibetan masters are called Rinpoche.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the original one, who is called just Rinpoche, was Padmasamhava Prathink.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, praying for the welfare of all beings, during meditation, accelerates one's progress on the path of enlightenment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: It creates great good karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it creates this sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the compassion, compassion is for all beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a view of equality that you see everybody is equal, not as mine and not mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Michael says, how can we reconcile the need to have the same love for everyone with being a devoted householder to one's partner and children?
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems to be a householder one would have to be more devoted to a small number of handful of people, more so than others.
[SPEAKER_01]: And wouldn't being more devoted to particular field mean that you're more attached when care more about those few than others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: and being such a householder is actually a little better than a little higher than, being absolutely selfish and living just for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it expands you, it stretches your little more.
[SPEAKER_01]: But higher than that is the cultivation of this idea of oneness in all beings through devotion maybe or through Vedanta.
[SPEAKER_01]: And such a person, how would that person be different from
[SPEAKER_01]: the attached householder who takes care of much more care of those people were nearby, and the related people were related to oneself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this person, this person would also be a householder, but you will find, has a more detached attitude towards those who are closest to him, and sort of maybe not exactly equal, but pretty much has the same attitude towards everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Swami Shivan and the Himself again, when He was a young boy, Tarak, so He grew up in a city just near Calcutta called Barashap, in Barashap, and in those days women used to have many children, but His mother had only this one son.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the number of boys were studying in a school who would stay in their house and Tarak's father would support them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Tarak's mother would feed them all equally and treat them all equally.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the women of the neighborhood would say that usually women, you've got only one son, you should take special care of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because those these child mortality was high.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, there's a very good chance that there's some chance that you might even lose the child.
[SPEAKER_01]: So take the good care of this one boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have got only one boy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take good care of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she would reply, for me they are all the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord has given him to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord will take care of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, all these children are the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Tarak Maharaj, Swami Shiva Nandiji, he repeats this with great appreciation.
[SPEAKER_01]: later on he told that this I will see, this is the sign of a satvic woman, this is a satvic mindset, this strong biological animal instinct of taking care of your own, that's good because that's it's better than being selfish, but that's still biological, that's still it's mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to see, you know, I was in a school for little children, when I became a monk first, and there were 600 boys in that school, but when parents would visit, I would see children are playing in the playground, hundreds of kids, but when the father and mother have come, how immediately, how
[SPEAKER_01]: In the blink of an eye, the zoom in among those say 50 or 100 kids in the playground into one particular child.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that particular child very different from everybody else?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but it's mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is in the bond of Samsara.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this very circumstance itself, someone like Tarak Maharaj's mother, it might seem strange to others, but she steps back and sees this child is also the same as that child, that child is also the same as this, they are children.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can take care of all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And devotion to God, or a Vedantic perspective, helps in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're devoted to God, you're love flows to Krishna, to Rama, or to the, you know, the baby Jesus, or whichever way you're worshiping God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you see that God in everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that everybody includes your own children, as well as the children of others.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So everybody becomes your own.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not theoretical.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have seen it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: again and again I have seen it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it helps in monasticism for example you notice that since you do not have husband, wife, children so one automatically has a sense of equal distance
[SPEAKER_01]: So that affection is, it's much easier to spread out that affection among everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can treat everybody equally or internally, at least you feel everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can see everybody as a manifestation of divine, or God is coming to me and through all.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's easier to be sort of, have equal power towards everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one advantage of the monastic line, but just exactly, there's a disadvantage.
[SPEAKER_01]: One can go to the other extreme and become an extremely selfish person.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, at least in household life, whether you like it or not after some time, you're forced to take care of, whether very fact of a family unit, of the fact that you are admitted that you are a father or a mother or a grandfather or a grandmother, or a brother or sister, you are forced, whether you like it or not, to take care of someone and do something for others, to sacrifice something for others.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas if a monk is not a good monk,
[SPEAKER_01]: And the monk is not being forced to do anything for anybody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so one can quite easily become a selfish person.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's any kind of special lifestyle, like a monastic lifestyle, has these both sides.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a great advantage, but there can equally be a danger.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: is one of the younger llamas.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's wrap it up today.