Thought for the Day

As written at Prasanthi Nilayam

Source: Radio Sai Global Harmony

Thought for the Day Archive

May 2003

01 May 2003

If it be truthfulness which is supreme, then the path will be straight and narrow, that of rectitude where thought, word and deed merge. If it be worldly which is predominant, the path will lead towards ceaseless activity to amass riches, power and fame. If greed has the upper hand, the path will lead downwards towards destruction, towards a life of shame and perversion.

Joy is but the interval between two moments of pain, and pain is the interval between two moments of joy. Do not count your tears of pain; do not dwell on your grief. Let them pass through your mind, as birds fly through the sky, leaving no trail behind. You must not lose heart when you are disappointed. Perhaps your wish itself was wrong or its realisation may have landed you in a worse situation. Anyway it is the will of the Lord and He knows best.

A time honoured proverb says "Na Sukhaath Labhyathe Sukham" - Real and lasting happiness cannot be won through physical pleasures. Lasting happiness can come only by the discipline of the mind and faith in the Lord which cannot be diminished by good or bad fortune. Man has to use the power of discrimination given to him to fight the evil forces within him and to foster the Divine elements in him by his own effort, by listening to the voice of his conscience. Man has to use the freedom to discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil.

Peace and happiness cannot prevail in the individual and society until man develops faith in the unity of mankind, inspite of the apparent differences. Man has to renounce all thoughts of difference and learn to derive delight from the Vision of the One in the smallest and the most colossal of God's Creation. Be happy and make others happy. Happiness in the nature of the Atma.

The Atma is unaffected by any subject or object. Even if the senses, mind, intelligence are inactive, that will not affect the Atma. They have nothing to do with the Atma, which you really are. To know the Atma as such an entity, unaffected and unattached is the secret of Jnana (Wisdom). Man is fundamentally happy and healthy. His nature is joy. So when he is happy and healthy, no one is surprised or worried. But, grief and sorrow are strange to his make-up. They are the result of a delusion that has overwhelmed his nature. So people get worried and set about finding out how he got so deluded.

Mothers are highly noble and virtuous. Their nobility cannot be described in words. From the worldly point of view, you should respect your father, mother, preceptor and husband. It does not matter, if you do not acquire worldly wealth, but you should win the wealth of your mother’s grace. Bhagavad Gita says that a woman has seven qualities while man has only three qualities. Jijabai made Shivaji great; Putlibai made Gandhi a Mahatma. The word “Amma” starts with the first letter of the alphabet.

Just as a child cannot be without its mother, a river must seek the ocean of its source. Just as a fish cannot survive outside water, man who has come from God cannot have real happiness until he returns to God.

Life is a mosaic of pleasure and pain - grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flowers. There is no bee without the sting; cleverness consists in gathering the honey nevertheless. Troubles and travails will haunt you. But you must not allow them to deflect you from the path of duty and dedication. The world today is afflicted with anxiety, fear, depression, hatred, greed and suspicion. The only way the world can be set right is for man to realise his high destiny; for every man yearns for two boons - attainment of joy and escape from sorrow.

The idea that a big bungalow with costly sofas etc. or a big pay packet is the aim of education should be given up. This idea breeds evil. The ideal should be, hands dedicated to hard work, heads dedicated to service and hearts full of compassion. Every one is eager to be happy; every one wants to work less and gain more, give little and get amply, but no one experiments with the other method, that is, wanting less and giving more. Every want is a shackle that hinders movement, a drag on the foot.

Man, in his ignorance, finds contentment in separating himself from the rest for the search of his own happiness, forgetting that he cannot be happy unless all are happy. He deludes himself through the cultivation of pride. He uses time for degrading himself to the bestial level. Time is an invaluable gift that has to be reverentially treated. People usually measure time as from sunrise to sunset, and sunset to sunrise. But that is only similar to the illusion which makes us infer that the moon is moving, when we see passing clouds.

Man will never gain happiness by giving a free rein to his senses. Man allows the mind - mere bundle of thoughts and desires - to guide his actions, instead of the intellect, which can discriminate, probe and analyse. While the mind will follow blindly every whim and fancy, the intellect helps man to identify one's duty and responsibility. Two things are essential for happy life: Dhaanya and Dhyana- Dhaanya or grains for sustenance of the body and Dhyana or contemplation for entering the temple of the Lord and merging in His glory.

If a man wishes to be happy, the first exercise he must do is to remove from his mind every bad thought, feeling and habit. Grief and joy are obverse and reverse sides of the same experience. Joy is when grief ends; grief is when joy ends. What exactly is grief? Sai Baba explains that it is merely a reaction to the loss of something gained or the failure to gain something desired. Therefore, the only way to escape grief and sorrow is to conquer desire for the illusory. The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes but in liking what one has to do. Whatever work you have to do, you should do it with pleasure and liking.

Some of you feel neglected by Me, when disappointment or trouble comes upon you. But such difficulties alone can toughen your character and make your faith firm. When you hang a picture on the wall, you shake the nail and find out whether it is firm enough to bear the weight of the picture. So, too, in order to prevent the picture of God (His image in your mind and heart) from falling and being shattered to bits, the NAIL (i.e. God's Name) driven in to the wall of the heart has to be tested by shaking it, to ascertain whether it is firm and steady.

The sugarcane should welcome the cutting, the hacking, the crushing, the boiling and the straining to which it is subjected; since without these ordeals, the cane would dry up and make no tongue sweet. So too, man must welcome trouble for that alone brings sweetness to the spirit within. If you wish to enjoy enduring happiness, you have to fill your mind with pure thoughts and develop fine feelings in your heart. Through good thoughts and kind actions, the heart gets pure and holy.

Man is born for the attainment of Joy, not for sheer eating and revelling. Real and lasting joy can be won only by a life led along the path of Dharma (Righteousness) which makes the divinity of man shine forth; illumination is the purpose of life; of the recurring sequence of birth and death. Man has in him the spark of Divinity, which is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent and immanent in the entire universe. In order to become ever aware of the innate Reality, man must learn the technique laid down by the Scriptures, revealed by the same Divinity.

The long-beaked stork never gets upset thinking over the sad fate of the living beings it swallows. Students of today are also unconcerned about the society and the parents who foster them. Every individual must prepare himself to promote the happiness of others. The nature of man is such that he experiences ananda (joy) by mixing with other humans. Not to mix and to lead a secluded life is a sign of weakness and of fear, not of courage. Active compassion, sympathy, love, tolerance, equanimity and many other qualities that help build man's character. You cannot be happy when the rest of mankind is unhappy. You are an organic part of the human race. Share your prosperity with others; make an effort to alleviate the sufferings of others. It is your duty.

Man is born for the attainment of Joy, not for sheer eating and revelling. Real and lasting joy can be won only by a life led along the path of Dharma (Righteousness) which makes the divinity of man shine forth; illumination is the purpose of life; of the recurring sequence of birth and death. Man has in him the spark of Divinity, which is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent and immanent in the entire universe. In order to become ever aware of the innate Reality, man must learn the technique laid down by the Scriptures, revealed by the same Divinity.

The greater the desires, the lesser the happiness you will experience. Promote the sense of contentment. The discontented man loses everything; only the contented man can experience real joy. The happiness in life will be in inverse proportion to your desires. In the journey of life, as in a railway journey, the lesser the luggage (desires) you carry, the greater the comfort. What is it that prevents man from securing never-ending happiness? There are five kinds of sufferings (kleshas). First is ignorance (avidya klesha); second is unsteadiness (asthitha klesha); third is immaturity (abhinava klesha); fourth is attachment (raaga klesha) and fifth is hatred (dwehsa klesha).

Man should not consider that happiness consists in having a house full of children and equipped with all the amenities for comfortable living. No one can liberate you, for no one has bound you. You hold on to the nettle of worldly pleasure and you weep, like the kite that is pursued by the crows so long as it carries the fish in its beak. Once the kite drops the fish, immediately it is free. So you too should give up attachment to the senses; then the sorrow and anxiety can harass you no more, and you can be happy.

There is a certain joy in being master of the senses, rather than being their slave. Now, you are a slave of the coffee-drinking habit. Resolve not to cater to that want at least for three days, continuously. You become the master of the tongue, and the tongue becomes your slave. If coffee is capable of conferring joy, all should get it equally from that beverage. But many prefer tea and some take it without sugar, while some others without milk. So, it is the mind that gives delight and not the coffee: it is not the object that caters to the senses.

Ananda is your greatest need. But, you cannot order it from any shop. It has to be earned the hard way - by doing good deeds, moving in good company, desisting from evil and keeping the mind attached to the glory of God. Good and bad cannot be kept together in the same vessel; then the good will also will turn bad. Night and light cannot co-exist.

Happiness and peace do not follow when man is fed well, clothed well, housed well and educated up to a good standard and employed under comfortable conditions, with no injury to health or security. There are many who have all these in plenty but who are yet worried or in pain or discontented. They depend on the inner equipment of man, not on his outer skills or riches.

Every man desires to acquire Ananda. From where can Ananda be acquired? Faith alone can win Ananda. Peace can be got only through Faith; Faith is the spring of joy. But now we see sorrow, wherever we cast our eyes. Why does this happen? Because man has lost faith. He has no faith in himself. How can he acquire Ananda? How can a person, who has not got faith enough to live happily for a few days, win the grace of God?

Life on earth is, as on the ocean, ever restless, with the waves of joy and grief, and of loss and gain, the swirling currents of desires and the whirlpools of passion, greed and hate. To cross the ocean, the only reliable raft is a heart filled with the Love of God and man. Man is born for a high destiny, as the inheritor of a rich heritage. He should not fritter away his days in low pursuits and vulgar vanities. His destiny is to know the Truth, live in it and for it. The Truth alone can make man free and happy. If he is not prompted by this high purpose, life is a waste and a mere tossing on the waves, for the sea of life is never calm.

The fire of sorrow and joy burns when the fuel of vasanas (tendencies) are fed in to the furnace of the mind. Take away the fuel and the fire dies out. Take away the vasanas, the force of impulses, promptings and urges and you become your own master. This is done in Yoga by various physiological exercises. But Bhakthi (the path of Devotion) is the easier means for this end. Namasmarana (chanting of God's name) is enough: it is said that the name 'Sitarama' sufficed in the Tretha yuga; the name 'Radheshama' sufficed in the Dwapara yuga; and now in the Kali yuga, all names have that capacity.

When you live in the world of desire, you must be prepared for both joy and grief. Invite the Minister, Bhoga (sensual pleasures) and you must be prepared for the visit along with him of his private secretary - Roga (sickness)! Invite on the other hand, the Minister Thyaga (sacrifice), or his colleague Yoga (control of mind); and you will be happy to receive their private secretary - Bhoga, who plays a minor role in the presence of his master.

Joy is a deceptive trap; grief is the real preceptor, teaching caution, circumspection, discrimination, detachment, awareness and vigilance. Death is not that merciless as it is made out to be; it is the friend and companion, the teacher, the kindly kinsman, which takes you in to its fold and clothes you with the halo of remembrance. The heart of man has to be toughened, not hardened; it has to be made soft, not slithery; this can be achieved only by the blows of loss, grief and distress. It is God's way of shaping us in the Divine mould.

Like the black bee which though it has the capacity to bore a hole through a strong bamboo, gets immersed in the enjoyment of honey when it enters the lotus flower and thus forgets its own power, man has forgotten the Divine in him and is immersed in worldly concerns and is intoxicated with mundane pleasures. That alone is the cause of all his misery.

The sorrows of life cannot be ended through hatred and injustice; these will only breed more of the same species. The sorrows will yield only to nobler and higher thoughts and experiences germinating from the pure heart, where the Lord resides.

Sorrows and disasters are the clouds that flit across the sky; they cannot injure the blue depths of space of faith. Look upon joy and sorrow as teachers of hardihood and balance. Grief is a friendly reminder, a good taskmaster, even a better teacher than joy. Do not flinch in the face of grief. Welcome the test because thereafter you are awarded the certificate. It is to measure your progress that tests are imposed.

31 May 2003

So long as man lives a life devoted to objective pleasures and objective victories, he cannot escape sorrow, fear and anxiety. There is no object without fault or failing; there is no pleasure that is unmixed with pain; there is no act that is not tainted with egoism. So be pure and develop detachment, which will save you from grief.
 

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