Monday, June 24, 2019
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Sri Brahmachaithanya Pravachan-June.23
Always Act with a Clean, Selfless Aim
Everyone of your actions should be motivated with a pure, selfless objective. A pure motive naturally results in clean action and is a step forward in progress. The object is like the spring that feeds a well; if it is a spring of clean water, the well will also yield sweet, drinkable water. We should therefore take care to keep the objective pure, and pray Rama for it.
If a person has enough to house, feed, and clothe himself, he should live in contentment and in nama. All that we should pray Rama for is to save us from indigence. On the occasion of a holy conjunction of the planets, God grants our wish whether holy or otherwise. We should beware of unholy incantations, and only wish for holy things and arousal of benevolent emotions. We should pray God and say, "Do as Thou wilt, O Lord, but grant that I never forget Thee. Forgive me for evil and sins I may have committed knowingly or unknowingly; never more shall I misbehave." God is bountiful and ever forgiving if we genuinely yearn to reform ourselves.
Those who indulge in the filth of material pleasures can never realize the sweetness that paramartha is. Insects wallowing in the gutters will never sicken of filth. Worldly-minded people, steeped in worldly pleasures, sling slander on the saintly, believing that they alone are wise and all-knowing. They overlook the fact that this wide world holds thousands who are more learned or wealthy or capable. Many of them do not realize the pangs of penitence that await them when the elation of worldly pleasures wears off.
Few indeed are those who live in the faith that God is omnipresent. The execution of prapancha involves effort and pain, whereas the experience of God is all Pleasureful. A fevered person hankers for a sweat; but mere hankering does not help; proper medication is required. Similarly, one who desires to have real devotion for God needs to resort to the divine name. This devotion, once acquired, will never cease.
Gold occurs in minute particles in pieces of rock in a gold-mine; so does God exist in us. Just as gold is recovered from the ore by removing the dross, so do we attain God when we cleanse the heart of all desire. God manifests Himself when the 'body-am-I' conviction is completely subdued.
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Saturday, June 22, 2019
Sri Brahmachaithanya Pravachan-June22
Happiness Lies in Detachment
We feel disappointed, miserable, when we fail to obtain what we desire. The best, the only remedy is, therefore, to renounce all desire. Be contented with what He is pleased to grant you, desiring no more, nothing else. This, in truth, is true renunciation, vairagya. As it is, we are sinking in the quagmire of mundane desires; to desire more of them is to hasten the sinking. What else can we conclude from this except that true and permanent happiness lies in abandoning desire, not in indulging it?
Why do certain things make us restless? Because we treat them as real. We should go about in life treating it as an actor treats his part in a play. True happiness is to be found only in what is real and lasting, not in what is unreal or transitory. Experience of mundane pleasures indulged in so far clearly indicates that they do not yield contentment; does it not mean that the pleasures they are supposed to yield are but hollow, illusory? And yet you continue to ask me what will make you happier in mundane life! How can you extract happiness from what is basically devoid of it?
Two little girls were playing at house-keeping. One, the daughter of a poor family, made simple bread and ate it with simple mango jam; the other, who belonged to a rich family, made cakes and sweets; but everything being only make-believe, which of the two could satisfy real hunger? Evidently, neither. So it is with prapancha. A wife and children are not indispensable for prapancha; anyone who seeks pleasure from anything tangible indulges in prapancha. So even an unmarried, single person lives in prapancha. In short, prapancha involves more than one; now, since each one has his own individuality and idiosyncrasies, how can they all meet the pleasures, whims, and fancies of any single person?
Prapancha needs a multiplicity of things; there can never be enough of them, for everything has in it the germ of the need for something else. God, on the other hand, is unique and complete, and independent of anything else. Attainment of God is, therefore, the fruition, the fulfilment, of all desire.
To feel that one is happy because of a certain thing, situation, or person, is futile, unreal. True happiness is independent of cause.
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