Thought for the Day

As written at Prasanthi Nilayam

Source: Radio Sai Global Harmony

Thought for the Day Archive

March 2003

01 March 2003

Do not treat a holy day like Sivarathri as a holiday, set apart for picnic, cinema, card-game, revelry and fun. The rishis fixed these days in the calendar for the contemplation of God and the service of God in man, for the removal of the weeds of vices and weakening habits. Contemplate on the Atma-linga, the Jyoti-linga, which this day emerges from Me; be convinced that the Linga is in everyone of you, for it is the mark of the Siva, that resides in the Sava (the mortal flesh). Allow the vision of the Atmalinga to enter into your inner consciousness and elevate it into divine heights.

It is best that you impress upon yourself the need for the basic step on this Mahasivarathri, for this Rathri (night) is the night that has to usher in the dawn of realization. On this Mahasivarathri, you have to impress on your consciousness that Nature is alive, since God is life. Nature is but a reflection of God. He lends the colour of order, purpose and activity to inert Nature. Without the motivator, Nature is helpless and powerless. Appearance is but a reflection of Reality; Iswara is but a reflection of Brahmam, the Intelligence behind the Awareness of all. Sivarathri inspires us to learn this basic Truth and shape our lives in the light of that illumination.

Egoism makes man see glory in petty achievement, happiness in trivial acquisitions, joy in temporary authority over others. Egoism will be destroyed if you constantly tell yourself, 'It is He, not I; He is the force, I am but the instrument. Egoism is a tough enemy and it requires constant vigilance to conquer it. The ego has to be fully curbed; the faith that 'not even a blade of grass can shake in the wind without His being aware of it and thus having caused it' has to be implanted in the mind.

Another fatal weakness is dambha, concent, egoism, pride, the desire to be talked about, to be praised. People want that their names and deeds should appear in daily newspapaers in big bold letters, as big as My head of hair! But, it is not the newspapaers that you strive to get attention. Earn the status in the realm of God, earn fame in the company of good and the godly. Progress in humility, in reverence to elders and parents.

Lust stands out as the prominent leader of all bad qualities. The other three, anger, attachment and greed, follow the leader. In fact, desire (kama), the lord of lust, is responsible for our death. It increases our attachment and thereby weakens our intelligence and we become inhuman. Because man is filled with pride, selfishness and self-interest, he has ceased to be human. Your age, your youth, your strength, your wealth, your status should not make you feel very proud because with your advancing age all these will vanish. In this context, what is the point in your feeling proud of this leather bag of a body?

Man had discovered electricity and is proud to use it for giving light. But what poor glory is this! When the sun rises even the brightest bulb pales into insignificance. Man's handiwork of brick and mortar is laid in ruins, with roofs flying in the air due to a storm. On what basis can he erect his pride? The sun is but a star among billions in space. The Earth is but a speck, rotating around the sun. The country to which he belongs is but a fraction of that speck; his place of residence is a microscopic dot in that fraction and he is but one among lakhs of people living therein. He struts about for a few winks of time, and prides himself most stupidly, as if he is the Lord and Master.

Though anger and hatred are flames of fire consuming the mind, they can also be used, like the hiss of the cobra, to ward off the evil that stalks the sadhaka; be angry at things that hamper you; hate the habits that brutalize you. In a household, when the wife is a shrew, there can be no joy or peace. Or, if the husband is a drunkard and a cruel tyrant, the atmosphere is charged with hate or grief. So, too , in the body, when the mind is a shrew or when the intelligence is a tyrant, there can be no peace.

The toughest fibre of the fibrous armour of sensual desires which encompasses your mind is anger. When you get angry, you forget everything - whether the person is a mother, father or teacher; you descend to the lowest depths. When you are agitated by anger or hatred or agony drink cold water; lie down quietly; sing a few Bhajan songs. Or walk some long distance alone, fast, so that the pestering thoughts are driven into silence.

The truth can flash only in a mind clear of all blemishes. The first blemish that I would like to warn you against is the inability to bear the success of others. Envy is the greatest sin. Vanity, envy and egoism, these three are akin. They cut at the root of man's real nature. To feel proud that you are a bhaktha is also a blot. Though you may be a mountain, you must feel you are a mound; though a mound you should not pretend to be a mountain.

Before performing any action, you must investigate whether it is right or wrong. At that stage, sometimes an evil force enters. It is Jealousy. It clouds your vision and its companion is Ego. This ego is perpetually seeking to dominate the body and the mind. These two evil elements are always trying to establish themselves, particularly in the minds of the youth. Jealousy has no reason or season.

Men may have superabundance of food, clothing and housing; but their hearts may be dry and their spirits glooming. Sense-control, self-confidence, contentment, absense of hatred and greed are far more precious possessions than land, money or houses. No effort is made today to give lessons of this discipline in the educational institutions. It is wrong to lay the blame on want of time. You are the obstructor, not the time. The monkey that cannot pull out its clencled fist fromthe narrow neck of the pot blames the pot or the maker of the pot. But if only it releases the hold on the peanuts it has caught in that fist, it can easily take its hand out. The fault lies in itself. So too, man's greed is the reason for this want of time. That is why I often refer to it as the monkey mind.

Man has the extra qualifications of moral, sense, education and the capacity to judge and discriminate, but man is still caught in the coils of greed and greed is the seed-bed of grief. It is easy to conquer anger through Love, attachment through reasoning, falsehood through truth, bad thoughts through good and greed through charity. A field may look barren and dead; but the first shower of rain will convert it into a green carpet, the seeds of grass in the soil sprout, at the touch of dampness. So too, at the first contact with temptation, the vishaya vasana (attachment of sensual objects) sprouts and prevents growth of spiritual discipline.

Man thinks he is enjoying pleasure, but really speaking it is the pleasure that is enjoying man. For, they destroy insidiously his energy, weaken his discrimination faculty, eat up his allotted years of life and enter his mind in a stealthy manner, infesting it with egoism, envy, malice, hate, greed and lust. A person might be an expert in many fields of knowledge or have mastery of many material skills, but without inner cleanliness, his brain is like a desert waste or a massive rock with no trace of love, mercy or expansive virtue.

Man today being caught in selfish pursuits has degraded himself to the level of animals. At every step, he is violating dharma. Every desire is turning into greed. Large-heartedness is on the wane. Man's vision has lost sight of love. Truth is a casualty in man's speech. Spirituality has become a form of ostentation. Qualities like lust and anger are having a free rein. Consciousness has become dormant in man. Human relationships have become mechanical and artificial. In fact, humanness has virtually disappeared.

Man is equipped with a return-ticket when he takes birth. Holding it in his grasp, he earns and spends, rises and falls, sings and dances, weeps and wails, forgetting the end of the journey. But, though he forgets, the wagon of life moves towards the cemetery, which is its terminus. It brings no glory to man if he is tied helplessly to the wheel of birth and death. His glory and greatness consist in disentangling himself from that revolving wheel.

Sense control will guard you against a host of evils. Do not believe that, because you are equipped with the senses, nothing harmful can happen, through their free exercises. You may have your car registered in your name and be driving it yourself, but, if you do not apply the brakes timely, accidents are bound to be your lot. Your body can be compared to a car. Your eyes are like the lights. Your stomach, the petrol tank; your mouth, the horn; your mind the steering wheel; Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha, the wheels; the air within the tyres is faith; and intelligence or Buddhi, the switch.

Human desire is illimitable and without end. It makes you pursue the mirage in the desert; it makes you build castles in the air; it breeds discontent and despair, once you succumb to it. But develop the thirst for Krishna; you discover the cool-spring of Ananda within you. Krishna-nama makes you very strong and steady; it is sweet and sustaining.

The world is a furnace and a factory where man has to shape his destiny by his honest, untiring efforts. He who takes up this challenge and spends his allotted years and the skill and the intelligence with which he endowed, in purposeful activity, is really entitled to the status of a Karma Yogi. The greatest single cause for darkness in the world today is envy. When one is happy and contented, others envy him and strive to ruin his peace of mind. When any one is acclaimed as great, malice moves others to invent calumny, in order to tarnish his reputations. This is the way of the world. There is in life the tragedy of ignorance and selfishness. They force man to take the wrong road and suffer calamity.

Remember always that it is easy to do what is pleasant; but it is difficult to be engaged in what is beneficial. Not all that is pleasant is profitable. Success comes to those who give up the path strewn with roses, and brave the hammer blows and the sword-thrusts of the path fraught with danger. As a matter of fact, no road is strewn with rose-petals. Life is a battlefield: a Dharmakshetra, where duties and desires are always in conflict. Smother the fiery fumes of Desire, Hatred and Anger, that rise up in your hearts. It is sheer cowardice to yield to turn you into beasts.

The end of wisdom is freedom. The end of culture is perfection. The end of knowledge is love. The end of education is character. There is a desire on the part of all of us to acquire these four qualities, namely wisdom, culture, education and reach their ends, namely freedom, perfection, love and character. But students should realize that if these qualities are not properly utilised, then they cannot call themselves students. As students and future citizens of this country, you have the responsibility for shaping the future of this country. Put your hearts in the right path by listening attentively to the more experienced men.

Sathya and Dharma go together; they are the two faces of the same coin. 'Sathyam-naasthi Paro Dharmah'. There is no Dharma higher than Sathya, Righteousness is built on the foundation of Truth. Strong will is the best tonic. The will becomes strong when you know that you are a child of immortality or a person who has earned the Grace of the Lord. Medicine and hospitalisation are for these who doubt and hesitate and argue about this doctor being more efficient than the other and this drug being more powerful than the rest. For those who rely on the Supreme Doctor, His Name is the drug that cures.

In this Kali age, the wicked have to be reformed and reconstructed, through love and compassion. That is why this Avatar has come unarmed. It has come with the message of Love. The only weapon which can transform the vile and the vicious is the Name of the Lord uttered with Love. The Name is redolent with Divine Glory. So when it is turned over in the mind, it transmutes it into an instrument for liberation from delusion.

We think of wealth as consisting of buildings, property, material goods and we have lost ourselves in the mad pursuit of temporal values. These do not constitute the real wealth which is capable of giving us abounding joy. Character is our wealth and good conduct is our treasure. Knowledge of God is the foundation for both. We should not lose that abiding, precious and eternal wealth, which is the knowledge of God, for fleeting and temporary things which are like passing clouds. We should also know that in our country, many Rajas who were very rich at one time are today reduced to the level of the common people. On the other hand, some of the common people have come up to the position of kings, enjoying greater material wealth; therefore we should not equate lasting happiness with changing material wealth.

Mind does not have any powers. The only power is Atma-shakthi, the power of Atma (Soul). Mind has no form. Mind can be said to be woven of desires, the Atma shines on the heart, whether the heart be pure or impure. If the heart is purified and if the strongest desire is for God, that is the best.

Seva brings out all that is great in man. It broadens the heart and widens one's vision. It fills one with joy. It promotes unity. It proclaims the truth of the Spirit. Students should purify their hearts and fill their minds with sacred thoughts and consider that their bodies are for service to the nation. Help ever; hurt never.Since everyone is of Divine origin, all must take a pledge to serve others. Those who cannot be living towards others cease to be human. Man should not regard himself as a weak and imbecile creature.

The fulfilment of human life consists in the service that man renders without any thought of return, in an attitude of selflessness. First, Self; then help; improve yourself, teach yourself, reconstruct yourself and then proceed to solve the problems of others. That reconstruction is quite easy, provided you inquire calmly into your own personality, i.e. the body, or the senses or the MIND or the Buddhi, etc.

Service to Man is more valuable than what you call 'Service to God'. God has no need for your service. Please man; you please God.Service is God. Why has God endowed man with a body, a mind and an intellect? Feel with the Mind, plan with the intelligence and use the body to serve those who are in need of service. Offer that act of service to God; worship HIM with that flower. Put into daily practice the ideals that Satya Sai has been propagating and make them known all over the world, by standing forth as living examples of their greatness.

All should be members of the groups doing social service. Human life is meant for service to others. You should not be satisfied with just undertaking service.You should also request friends and relatives to join in.Whatever talent a person has should be dedicated to the service of the rest of humanity, indeed of all living beings. Therein lies fulfillment. Social service should not become 'show-cial' work carried out for publicity or with the camera in view nor should it become 'slow-cial' work. Why go slow when you are doing good to the deserving? Do as much as you can. If you cannot do any good, at least desist from doing harm or from finding fault with those who serve you.

Worship of God in temples and shrines has its place in sanctifying time and sublimating the instincts and impulses. Inquiry into reality has its use in clearing the fog of doubt. But activity in the shape of service charged with love fulfills the aims of our path to God. All hands are HIS, all feet, all eyes and all faces and mouths are HIS. He works through all hands, HE works through all feet; HE sees through each eye; HE eats and speaks through each mouth. Everything is HE. Every step is HIS, every look, every speech, every act is HIS. That is the lesson that service instills.

The human body is for rendering service to others like them, otherwise it will have no meaning. I direct you to implant three ideas in your hearts; (1) Do not forget God. (2) Do not put faith in the world you see around you - it is ever changing and does not last. (3) Do not be afraid. I want you also to banish two ideas from your hearts. (1) Forget the harm that anyone has done to you. (2) Forget the good that you have done to others.

31 March 2003

Man when engaged in seva karma (service activity) for the good of society, is bound to encounter many hurdles. This is a world of dual characteristics - good and bad, joy and grief, progress and regress, light and shade; do not get upset by all this. Do your duty as best as you can with prayer to God. Work hard and sincerely and leave the rest in His Hands. What exactly is SEVA? It is the very essence of devotion, the very breath of a devotee, his very nature. It springs from the actual experience of the devotee, an experience that convinces him that all beings are God' children that all bodies are altars where God is installed; that all places are HIS residences.
 

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