Video 26

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna with Swami Atmajnanananda (10/02/20)

your words are like nectar bringing life to squirt souls they are praised by poets and remove all sin they are auspicious to hear wonderful and exalted those who spread these words throughout the world are truly giving souls welcome everyone to our class on the gospel of sram krishna hi kumar uh if you remember from last week uh we're still on the on the steamer this is the chapter the master and keisha keshav and the group of brahmo devotees had surprised suramar krishna they had anchored their boat near the dakshinishwar temple and then they came on board and they came on shore and invited srama krishna to go on this outing just about not to go anywhere they go up and down the river and of course he was the main attraction they wanted him to come and and they had snacks and they would listen to this ramakrishna speak and that would be a wonderful outing for them by chance video krishna goswami who had been the uh second-hand man you can say of keshav and one of the main leaders in and acharyas of the of the brahmos homage until the split happened and he joined the the other group so now there were two groups keisha of the group and and vijay's group uh he happened to show up the same day just by chance to visit srama krishna and was in his room and when astronomy christian decided to go on the boat uh vijay also went so the two of them were there and slightly uncomfortable because they hadn't really spoken and there was a little bit of probably ill feeling or a disappointment on the side of keshav that he had left uh whatever but that's the situation this is october 27th 1882 and we stopped at the bottom of page 137. so suramar krishna has been talking about this difficulty of living in the world he had sung a song by ram prasad and he talked about people being deluded through the maya of muhammad and getting attached to the world and and being kind of sunk in worldliness so one brahma devotee asked sir can't we realize god without complete renunciation now complete renunciation means formal renunciation i brought the bengali just for fun we can see exactly what some of these terms are shri army krishna would always insist on a complete renunciation but not formal and external renunciation if we understand complete renunciation to mean real genuine renunciation and non-detachment in dispassion then we can we can clearly see that he would say no of course that you have to have it so uh the actual actual bengali is the shop tag nakoli unless we renounce everything it doesn't really say complete religion unless we renounce everything can we realize god so by everything the the real question that the devotee is asking is do we have to give up wife and children they're all men of course but we have to give up family life do we have to take to the life of a wandering monk do we have to give up our careers and really renounce everything spend 24 hours a day in spiritual practice essentially renounce the world chong cho tag they say to uh in order to realize god so sir can't we realize god without complete renunciation or without renouncing everything master with the left of course you can so he he would always insist that in internal renunciation is the real thing what is this distinction in internal and external renunciation the external renunciation would really be monastic life and he he understood that if anyone can renounce everything then this itself was a great thing if anybody can give up uh family life and and not care for worldly pleasures or having a career and good reputation and all of that he used to say this is a great thing even if one doesn't do any spiritual practice you have a monk who's not doing everything he should at least by renouncing everything he's done something very important so he would he would agree with that much on the other hand he would say calling on god living in the world is really a great thing and there are advantages like fighting from a fort sometimes he would say that if if the monk who renounces everything does his spiritual practice is nothing special bahadur he says nothing great about that but if the householder in the midst of all of his or her household duties raising the family having a job will call on god sincerely and he said this is a great thing so it's like somebody carrying a huge weight on their head and performing all of their duties so he he stressed more this idea of internal renunciation for both so both the monk and the householder equally have to have the spirit of renunciation they have to have non-attachment uh if if the monk is attached and we find this very often that uh shangsha tag in bengali they use this term to renounce samsara to renounce the world then they join the the ashram in the ashram becomes their shanghai it becomes their world and they have the same types of attachments there that otherwise they would have had to their to their family this becomes a bit of a danger for the monk that uh without giving up attachment they're simply switching it so uh the real thing is detachment is dispassion uh is renouncing ego uh these these are the essential things and the householder can practice these as well so now with a laugh he's talking to the householders very often the household holders felt that uh takur was not being a hundred percent honest that he would say oh you're cajoling us you're just consoling us controlling us you're treating us like little children and keshob used to say one day you'll sting yes the taco he'll say yes go live in the world enjoy the world one day he'll sting us he'll bite us like the cobra that means that he's just prepping us preparing us but one day he'll say yes and i'll give up everything and call on god but talk would say no no he left why should i do that we have to remember that he would give slightly different teachings for those who were different stages in spiritual life in different stages in their own personal life if they're in the household stage if they're in the gurihasta stage as opposed to the vana preston stage or the final stage of life he would different types of teachings and he knew the brahmos and taqwa's eyes were not not the highest level not the most qualified uh spiritual aspirants he he loved them and and he had great regard and affection for them keisha of course he he also had great respect for and vijay great respect for them but he would never compare them to these young boys who came to him who were still teenagers who we saw would never get attached to the world would these are the future direct disciples monastic disciples and people would be shocked to hear srama krishna talking about keshav who was a world-renowned figure and narendra who was a teenage boy when he would say that if if keshav has one honor of this power then narendra has 16 such honors so they would say how can he say this about this young boy but he knew that they had that that fire and that real spirit of renunciation and that real capacity for a spiritual practice so uh this is the answer he's given to the brahmos sometimes when he's talking to his direct disciples even to m because m he was neither a householder nor a sanyasan he was sometimes they use this term sanyasi that he really lived like a sannyasi and within the structure of the householder's life that means he didn't give up his wife but he spent so much time in solitude and in spiritual practice he didn't give up his profession he still managed to teach for many years be a headmaster and run a school and and all of that but really lived otherwise like a sannyasin so there were different categories so these are brahmos would be that probably the next we have those who will renounce everything and then we have some of the great householder disciples there's a m especially nag mahasay especially perhaps the ball around both to a certain extent but then then i would say these brahmos so with the laugh because he knows what they're thinking is it talk we're going to tell us that you give up your wife you give up your family you give up your job and everything and go into the forest and colon god they had a little fear so he wants to remove that so he says of course you can why should you renounce everything you are all right as you are following the middle path like molasses partly solid and partly liquid so he's telling them yeah your your life is is a bit of a compromise but that's okay that he would very often say hold on to god with one hand and hold into the world with the other hand when the time comes when you really can let go of the world with that one hand then hold on to god with both time does not yet come and he didn't want people uh the the men especially because the women in those days really had no means of livelihood without the men he didn't want them to uh disregard their their duties to family that who will look after them he would say you want people from the from the para neighborhoods the people to come in and look after your family and raise them and do all of that he said you're the one you you got married you took that responsibility you have to do it so uh it's a bit of a compromise and at the same time it's a nice blending this is the householder life the performance of of the worldly duties is spiritual practice it should be looked upon that way now he's talking about this card game this is called knox that it says the object is to stay in the game by scoring under 17 points so they'll distribute a certain number of cards and you add up the face value of each card those who get too many then they're out of the game uh it's a little bit like this musical chairs we played as kids that there'll be ten kids walking around the circle but only nine chairs so then you keep walking until the music stops when it stops everybody tries to find a chair there'll always be one person who doesn't get a chair that he tried to get one in front it was too late one and back it was too late that that kid is out of the game so what can he do he can just watch he's no longer a participant he's an observer so tucker is saying that i'm no longer a participant he got too many points way early in the game he never got too much involved in anything having scored the maximum number of points i am out of the game i can't enjoy it but some are very clever now he's being a little facetious here because in his own mind the one who is out of the game is the one who is escaped who is safe just like we we saw last time about the flying the kites the ordinary understanding is the kites that break loose are the ones that lost the game but in this song of ram prasad they're the ones who got their freedom so mother claps her hands he's very happy so what he's really saying is that i can sit back there's no anxiety in my life i i'm already out i don't have to keep going in circles looking for a chair listen i'm free with all of that but it's just kind of a joking way he's saying you're the clever ones that you're still playing the game because people like this game they like the competition they like the uh the risk that we have to take in in life dangers that are obstacles and everything so but you were very clever some of you have scored 10 points some six some five so those who only have five their chances of winning of course are greater you've scored just the right number so you're not out of the game like me the game can go on why that's fine or laugh so they got the joke i tell you the truth there is nothing wrong in your being in the world now takur is really giving his his his real opinion he's not just playing with them like children but for them he's saying because he knows that they're not ready or capable or qualified to renounce everything they renounce the world then they'll be just be said with all sorts of of desires and anxieties and fears and and attachments and everything so it doesn't make any sense for them there's nothing wrong in your being in the world but this is the key you must direct your mind toward god otherwise you will not succeed so we we have this ideal of king janaka which we'll get some reference to in the chapter also and we read even in gita that through karma alone through the performance of action he was a king and they had to rule the big kingdom in matila through through action alone that there have been some and probably a few there have been some who have realized the highest who've attained perfection through action alone but taco would always say but how many austerities that janaka practiced how wise was he how much he did to prepare his mind so that he could live rule a kingdom without any type of of attachment so he's emphasizing this it's not enough even even to just perform one's duty i wanted dharma to do it as dharma without any personal uh or the selfish motive behind it that that's that's very good and that has to be done that's the minimum but at the same time one must call on god so otherwise do you must direct your mind toward god otherwise you will not succeed do your duty with one hand and with the other hand hold to god after the duty is over you will hold to god with both hands this of course is is exactly what this this four-fold scheme of life is all about the brahmacharya first and then god the grihastha the householder is supposed to enjoy the world supposed to the the two purusharthas the two aims of life that go with the house of their life are kama and arta so that means in in enjoy the world and accumulate some wealth but do it for for the sake of the family and for the sake of society and dharma the the third purushartha that has to guide everything that has to rule everything then after that gradually we have the two other stages there's one stage you can go into the forest and prepare for the final sannyasa complete renunciation of everything so that final stage was when one lets go completely of the world and holds on to god with both hands and and spends the final years of life simply in in spiritual practice now we'll get a very very important teaching it is all a question of the mind i don't know how many times in taqwarza says this there will be dozens of times i'm sure if we went through the whole thing it is all a question of the mind what does that mean it means he used to repeat that also that the whatever we gain in life is the result of what our attitude is that it's our mental attitude that's more important than any external objective factors so it is all the question of the mind bondage and liberation are of the mind alone takwa we think was a ignorant fool he used to say what do i know i haven't read anything i don't but he knew a lot and he was very familiar with many sanctuary texts he was very familiar with the gita and sometimes people would say oh but you haven't read any of these things he said but how much i've heard and all he had to do was hear things once one of the books we know that he was very very fond of is the ashtava krisamhita the dialogue that takes place with this ashtavakra he became a great sage and full of the highest advaita vedanta and there's a verse there that tako must have known pako wasn't wasn't the type to like like many of us said the speakers uh we have to quote the sanskrit first to show that we know so much and then we'll give the translation and everything we didn't care for those things there were few times where he would actually recite a sanskrit verse when we go through the bengali we say but very rarely would he do it but sometimes what he says is so clearly a reference to a verse that we know it this he says bondage and liberation are of the mind alone and then he'll go on later if we think we're bound we remain bound if we think we're free this is this is probably the most famous verse from ashtavakra samhita it says means we take an attitude it doesn't mean that something is literally true or absolutely true this is this is the way we'll view things so if i if i take a stance even though i feel that on every side i'm bound but if i say no i will i'll emphasize this other side so muktabhi mani muktohi then immediately if i think of myself as free then i start to understand the truth of it then but but but if if i think that i'm bound and i keep telling myself i think i'm a sinner i keep telling that i i i become that so this is all the question of the mind how we look upon ourselves and then it says kimvadantiha kimwalanthi is a saying so it says this is a popular saying kinvananti that if if i think i'm free i become free if i think i'm bound i remain bound satya so this is true this is true and then it says as one thinks so does one become that becomes the the end the path that one travels the gati so takur he must have been familiar with this he doesn't there's no need for him to say as we find in ashtavakra then quote the verse and everything but it's very clear sometimes that he had a tremendous understanding of of scripture we don't know how much because he didn't emphasize it uh gita i'm convinced that he must have known on gita quite thoroughly and he does refer to verses in gita very often and sometimes these different texts this is one book that he kept in his room and this is the book that we know that he forced upon narendra he wanted narendra to read it he read a little bit of it and he laughed at it he didn't like it because according to the brahmos this world is the creation of god to say that everything is is nothing but ramen itself so he says also this table this this pod is brahman this this table and chair these are brahmin what foolishness but takur said okay you read it for my sake you don't have to pay any attention he knew that of course he would have paid to read it from isaiah and then the famous incident where he touched him and swamiji had all these different experiences and realized the truth of it all okay so it is all a question so we're going to get three beautiful things right in a row it is all a question of the mind so our attitude is the most important thing then bondage and liberation are of the mind alone because we're already free so if we if we say that we're bound that's the real abhiman that's the real false superimposition we don't have to do anything to change ourselves we simply have to realize that we've always been free and that the bonds that we have are our own of our own making swamiji used to like to say that we're we're sitting in a bright room with our hands over our eyes crying where's the light where's the light don't we know all we have to do is remove our hand it's there already we're already perfect but of course we're not perfect because we don't realize it and we ourselves are creating that bondage through this false identification now we'll get this third very very important teaching the mind will take the color you diet with one of again taku gives this illustration so many times it is like white clothes just returned from the laundry if you dip them in red dye they will be red if you dip them in blue or green they will be blue or green they will take only the color you dip them in whatever it may be now there's a corollary to this there's uh he'll use the same illustration with a secondary meaning to it he'll tell the story of a man who shows up in a village with a vat of liquid and he says to the villagers you come with your white cloth and you tell me what color you want to call the cloth to be dyed so one goes and said i want my cloth to be dyed red and he says very good he takes the cloth and he dips it in his vat nobody knows how he's doing or what he's doing it comes out red the next person says i want my cloth to be yellow he dips it in the same liquid the same vet filled with with liquid and it comes out yellow so it happens with all of them blue green purple whatever color they want that's what it came then one person said i want you to dye my cloth the color of the liquid in your vat so that means he wants uh he wants that reality which can manifest itself in any possible way this will be the one who doesn't take the water from the from the pond and in his own container the one who dives in everyone laughs because you the what will the liquid be in it it has to be colorless it has to be colorless if it can if it can yield any possible color if it's any particular color everyone will come out that color so that means that the ground of the form has to be formless it has to be transcended anyhow here there are a couple very special things to this one is that he says that the mind that he said here is like white clothes just returned from the laundry now when we become monks we become the experted dying cloth from the very beginning even before we take our sanyasa a couple days before one of the things we have to do is we were given white cloth and we have to take this guru in those days everybody used uh this guerra mati it is actual mud dirt it's it's uh in the dirt and you mix it with with water or sometimes that you have to rub it like like sandal paste to to make a a paste out of it and you add water and then you dye your cloth now the cloth that we get there is perfectly white it's clean it's never been used before we'll wash it first to get the starch out but then it's perfectly clean later many years later when we we get clothes sometimes it'll have a little stain on it or something like that and wherever there's any stain say you know this uh coconut water huh it's very bad to stain things you don't know it when you just have white cloth but if you have a lid on your cloth it won't take the the dye very well so we realized that in order for cloth to take the dye it has to be clean it can't have any stain on it so this is one thing there's three factors i've spoken about this before i like this concept there are three three different factors if we want to uh die the mind in the thought of god if we want to dye the cloth in in the in the liquid there are three factors one the cloth should be clean second we have to leave it in for a long time and the third the solution has to be a very strong solution if it's very watered down then we'll get a very pale color of yellow if it's of orange if it's a very thick type of solution it'll come out very deep a very deep type of orange so there has to be intensity of thought this is number one and it has to go on for a good period of time it's not that we just spend five minutes a day we have to give some let the mind soak in it now the third thing is always the confusing thing because we know that our minds aren't pure our minds aren't like this white cloth that has just come back from the from the washerman the hobie we know our minds are not like that why does taco say that my theory is that he's telling us that don't wait until this mind has become perfectly pure before you you soak it in the thought of god because it will never happen that we take this mind as it is now and by immersing it in the thought of god it will become pure and as it becomes pure and pure it will take that die so this this dye this thought of god is double acting dye purifies the cloth and it turns the color of it at the same time so it's very nice for us to think that way that whatever stain there is on the mind is superficial the mind itself is pure the real mind what is it that's impure just the thoughts these are surface things these which come and go these some scatters which can be changed there's nothing permanent the mind cannot be an impure mind nobody has an impure mind with impure thoughts the mind itself is is like this white cloth there's a very beautiful idea why because his mind this mind is nothing but uh there's an ocean of consciousness that has some superficial surface waves on it and impurities in it and everything uh it's like saying water is always pure why because all the impurities in it can be can be taken out we can distill the water we can add there's something called nirmali you can add some type of little nut there are other other ways of purifying it that the uh the water can never be permanently impure it can always be purified because that's the nature of water so this is the nature of the mind nature of the mind is that it can go back to its pristine state where it can get fully immersed in this this color of god the one phrase that i like very much from the swami abhidananda's the reality the being the essence of srama krishna holy mother's whole being was died ranjita ranjita means died and it often means red this dye that's a red color it it uh she thought of taqwa so much that uh virtually the mind became it became the dye that died the color of srima krishna we often talk in terms of taqwa being the mold and we want to pour ourselves into the mold of srama krishna and come out that way this is another way of looking at it that through thinking of him we become we take on those those qualities equally so with the holy mother of course that if we think of her or any with buddha christ or uh and any ideal that we have uh with in any religious faith the more we think about them the more we become like them this is one of the key ideas behind meditation and and deep contemplation there was an incident uh in vrindavan when holy mother after takwa passed away they took holy mother on pilgrimage and swami yogananda was there he that's when she actually initiated him she be he became her first disciple and holy mother went into a very deep meditation and a deep type of samadhi and they had to repeat the name of krishna to bring her mind down and after the mind came down a little bit to the worldly plane it was as if she had become possessed by srama krishna that because very rarely would she speak to anybody but she spoke just the same way that he would speak and she did a very curious thing she asked for pon and generally she wouldn't do that in front of the men or anything like that taqwa apparently had his own way of chewing panda everyone does it a little differently he would always bite off the tip of it bite it off and spit it out and then put it in so you could chew it and the spices and everything would come out they saw a holy mother did it exactly the way taqwa did it and put her in her mouth the way that he used to do it and they've put questions to her and she answered just the way tucker would so that her whole being had been died in the color of srama krishna so this is what he's saying to us that the mind will become transformed it's a very beautiful idea mind will become transformed don't wait until the mind is is pure because the mind won't become pure unless we do this we have to keep dipping it in each time it'll get pure and pure and take more and more of the dye there's another nice verse i don't remember where it's from but it says that if you want to wait until everything is is perfectly smooth and everything is all your affairs are taken care of your mind is quiet and and calm you want to wait until that day before you start to call on god then you're like the fool who's standing in front of the ocean waiting for the waves to subside before going in for a bath a very nice verse i won't recite it because i have already said that there's only what pundits do so so this is what taku is saying it's a very great idea if he said to us that unless your mind is 100 percent pure no matter how many times you dip it in the die it won't take the color then we'll say well then what can we do word we're hopeless how else can we make it pure if we don't think of god if we don't keep dipping it there so this is a very wonderful thing don't you don't have to think that the mind is is uh it's full of impurities that what a sinner i am what desires i have what bad thoughts i have he said don't think like that think that the mind is pure think that you're perfect think that yes i'm already free i'm already perfect but i don't know it yet i still have to diet i still have to do all of that so i'll read this again this is such a beautiful small paragraph it is all a question of the mind bondage and liberation are of the mind alone there's no real bondage in this world if we think we're bound we're bound this is exactly what that verse is then the mind will take the color you diet with it is like white clothes just returned from the laundry so the mind is like think of it as pure if you dip them in red dye they will be red if you dip them in blue or green they will be blue or green they will take only the color you dip them in whatever it may be now he's going to give some examples of how this abhimaan in arupa he uses both of these terms usually this to adopt a certain attitude we adopt a certain attitude it can be good it can be bad if in in bengal in those days there were many young men who saw the british and how they would wear their boots and their pants and they would whistle a tune going down the street they would adopt that attitude so that they would feel themselves to be like the british that same thing can be applied we can do it adopt that attitude of a lover of god if a child of god the same concept utilized in a healthful way on one hand and not helpful in the other so he says haven't you noticed that if you read a little english you would once begin to utter words maybe a dozen english words something like that and not really english words these were the english words that have kind of had come into the bengali language that everybody would know things like company factory things like that and a few interesting words dilute he knew this sometimes he would use that word dilute that rather than have that intensity and it would become anyhow so here he's just making up different words mimicking what sounded to him like english then you put on boots and whistle tune and so on it all goes together or if a scholar studies sanskrit he will at once rattle off sanskrit verses this is abhiman see this abhimaan also means pride it has a very neutral type of word it can have a very good meaning and it can have a negative type of meaning it simply means that this is this is uh our attitude it's a very high spiritual attitude or it can be based on nonsense i can have a an opinion of myself which is completely out of whack i i may think of myself as uh a very popular person everybody loves me and i'm a very ordinary person or i might think of my of myself as somebody that oh everybody thinks that uh i have no good qualities this and that and it turns out everyone admires me so this abhimaan how we think of ourselves is not always very objective it has that gives that leeway for us to understand sometimes it's completely wrong so this is bad habit so if we think we're bound then we're completely wrong we're we're assuming a posture that doesn't agree with the truth if you are in bad company then you will talk and think like your companions on the other hand this is the good side when you're in the company of devotees you will think and talk only of god then again the mind is everything a man has his wife on one side and his daughter on the other now remember don't think why is he only talking about men he's talking only that because there are only men in front of him it was a very uh restricted society in those days that even even in the brahma sumatra which was so liberal even during that period brahman somalia was so liberal husband and wives didn't sit next to each other that uh there when there would be a screen and women would be behind the screen that whenever taco would visit the homes that the women would be in the inner apartments he would go there and and have fun with them and laugh and joke and have food there and everything but they wouldn't come out sometimes they would peep through the window and like holy mother how she would to stand in the number hour after hour and look through this the cracks in the bamboo screen so she could look in and see what was happening he was he was so he knew all of that sometimes he would say to the devotees open the door there was a door that goes out to the northern veranda open the door he says otherwise how was she he never called her by her name how will she learn about this joy of the bliss of god and that she can see it this uh he always used to call her ramallah's aunt this is uh in in that culture even today true to a certain extent uh is a sign of respect and not to call somebody by their given name just as a son or a daughter won't call her mother or father by their given name even in this this culture here it's considered very disrespectful so it there really a sign of respect that he would always refer to her as ramallah's aunt totopodi never called him totopuri it was always the naked one nangta so there are many examples like that so uh so this is why uh he'll be talking about uh he's only talking to the men so it's that none of the the wise there are all married people all of them i may be one or two exceptions i i don't know about but in general there was no monastic tradition within the brahma-samaj they were married people even the acharyas were married people even vijay who became a sanyasan he was married he had a family he renounced everything so the mind is everything a man has his wife on one side and his daughter on the other he shows his affection to them in different ways but his mind is one in the same now we'll go back to this to this bondages of the mind and freedom is also of the mind so why is freedom of the mind freedom is of the mind until we attain to that highest state of realization before that it's also a question of aropa before that it's also that we're trying to tell the mind convince the mind but we're convincing the mind of something that's true this is the difference convinced convincing the mind is something that's true if if i tell somebody that yes i'm free i'm perfectly free and they say to me well is it really true and i'll say what's really true is that i'm bound on every side by my desires by my my faults by my bad habits this and that i know that but deep down real so real self within is free i have a conviction regarding that so there's there's a truth to that but uh it's still a question of the mind i'm trying to convince the mind this is this is what we know today is affirmation and an affirmation is affirming something that's that's true and that can help us through that affirmation it can help us attain to that idea the bad thing is that the opposite is also true the taco would say you keep saying that i'm a sinner i'm a sinner you'll become a sinner that means not you'll become a sinner it means that one day you'll wake up and that'll be your identity this is how i look at myself i look at myself as a sinful person not person a person who has some bad thoughts but as a sinful person so this sense of identification comes through the repeated letting the mind dwell on these things so bondages of the mind freedom is also of the mind and man is free okay a man is free if he constantly thinks i am a free soul how can i be bound whether i live in the world or in the forest we think that the swamiji was the bold one and taku was very soft tuck her head that same that's where swamiji got it that same boldness how can i be bound whether i live in the world or in the forest i am a child of god the king of kings who can bind me if bitten by a snake a man may get rid of the venom by saying emphatically there is no poison in me in the same way by repeating with grit and determination i am not bound i am free one really becomes so one really becomes free now becomes free means that one realizes one's innate freedom that this is the nature of the self the nature of this health is freedom so this is uh that distinction between being and becoming we are undergoing a transformation we're going from what we think we are to what we really are this is the spiritual path what we falsely think we are to what we really are and we do it by uh telling ourselves that we already are what we really are the very nice nice idea one summon gave me a book of the christians i asked him to read it to me it talked about nothing but sin to kesha of course he's talking about the bible to kesha sin is the only thing one hears hears of ed your brahma so much the rich who constantly says i am bound i am bound only succeeds in being bound he who says day and night i am a sinner i am a sinner verily becomes a sinner so that means that one identifies with that i feel that i'm a sinful person and if we have that then there's no hope for us we we we have to feel that uh this is this is uh some covering of algae on the surface of the ocean of satchidananda which is perfectly pure underneath and we just have to remove this external scum and to realize that purity underneath because that pure mind is the pure self is the oddman another great teaching of takurus they are all one and the same this pure mind and the pure intellect and the pure self the difference is that this this the covering of impurities the covering of uh restlessness of the mind and desires and all of these things these they hide the true nature of the mind which is always pure the mind is pure and tucker says it like the white cloth we say no my mind is not pure our minds are pure the thoughts are impure tendencies may be a little impure but the mind itself is pure otherwise it couldn't be purified you you bring a dirty white cloth it's still a white cloth only it's dirty that can be cleansed that can you can get all of the stains out the beautiful stain removers nowadays and again it's the white cloth that's the essence of it so the same with the mind we should think that way and what tucker is saying one should have such burning faith in god that one can say what i have repeated the name of god and can sin still cling to me how can i be a sinner anymore how can i be in bondage anymore if a man repeats the name of god his body mind and everything become pure okay now look see what he's saying that uh these are both true that the mind is is pure in essence but through spiritual practice it becomes pure that means in reality so uh if it affects our understanding of everything or it is it is necessary for us to purify these some scottish to purify our thoughts to purify our tendencies uh not the mind itself but that which the mind is turning out the mind itself uh we should really think of as one with the self as the highest self it's a very nice teaching a little bit different from this this typical sankey point of view that the mind is just an instrument that it has to be purified of course so it reflects the the uh the sun that's shining in it this is a little bit different this mind itself is this ocean of sachitananda only it's close to the top and it's and it got a little broken out in some ways and it's got some it's been churned a little bit it's got some some things floating around it that we don't like it may be uh that there are plastic bottles in it it may be there's lots of impurities and all things like that it doesn't affect the purity of the ocean because the water is water water is water these these things don't cling to it they don't they don't enter into the molecules in such a way that they can't be removed so the water can be purified because it's the real nature of it so one should have such burning faith in god that one can say what i have repeated the name of god and can sin still cling to me how can i be a sinner anymore how can i be in bondage anymore if a man repeats the name of god his body mind and everything become pure so even though we can say see there's another big mistake you say i'm already perfect therefore i don't have to do anything that's another big mistake i'm already perfect but i want to realize it and i have to purify my thought process my thinking my desires all of that so both are necessary there's understanding that we're already perfect and this understanding that we're not perfect that we have a long way to go to make the our thoughts come in line with reality why should one dog talk only about sin and hell and such things say but once oh lord i've undoubtedly done wicked things but i won't repeat them and have faith in his name the name of god has a power to purify the mind now you may say well this is a little bit unscientific why should just repeating the name have that power one thing is that we repeat the name and and what is being named the the reference to that should come into the mind if i repeat the name of srama krishna at least once that i should be thinking of him so it's the thought it's not just the name it's the name and the thought behind it but even even without concentrating there's supposed to be some power that the power of the name of god is equally as great as god himself if not more so there's a one of the stories from the put on us is that uh every once in a while someone will say that i'll donate as much gold as my body waves something like that a great king and they'll have these huge scales the big pans and the king or whoever it is wealthy person will sit on one side and it'll go down and the other pen is there and they'll keep putting gold and more things there until it goes up and then then that's that's equal a little bit more than the weight of the man so uh they wanted to do it i don't remember all the details with with the christian himself and no matter how much they put on the other side it could never equal the weight of krishna then uruk mini said i know what to do she took a toshi leaf and she wrote the name of krishna on it and and just put that one leaf on that pan and it went all the way up so he says the name of god is even greater than god himself the name of krishna had more weight than krishna himself and now just to show they give us faith in this this idea of repeating the name of god suramar krishna became intoxicated with divine love and saying if only i can pass away repeating durga's name how can still then oh blessed one withhold for me deliverance wretched though i may be so uh this taco didn't like this idea as i said but the point is that we have to be objective about ourselves we have to know that we we're not perfect people and we have to accept that we we shouldn't wallow in it and we shouldn't keep saying that i'm a terrible person and this and that we we have to be realistic about ourselves but know that these are superficial things number one number two i didn't choose them i was born with many of these tendencies these are some scottish from the previous lifetime or even habits that i formed when i was very young before i could rationally think about them or the result of company that i had or environment all different things that now when i want the mind to be pure and i see that it has all of these these contrary tendencies to it i'll be realistic and say okay i'll face them i'll do what i can to to get over them but i don't have to identify and and define myself by them and limit myself by then then he said to my divine mother i prayed only for pure love i offered flowers at her lotus feet and prayed to her mother here is thy virtue here is thy vice take them both and grant me only pure love for thee here is thy knowledge here is thy ignorant take them both and grant me only pure love for thee here is thy purity here is thy impurity take them both mother and grant me only pure love for thee here's thy dharma here's thy dharma take them both mother and grant me only pure love for thee now i'm going to uh disc of a very short discussion because it's a very very big topic here which we don't have time to go through completely but what does taquer mean by this sudha bhakti this this only pure love for me now i raise this question because we'll find that there are other times when they're talking about devotion without knowledge and taco will say the opposite he'll say how can you love someone if you don't know that person that just just to have this this uh love of god and not feeling any need to have any deeper understanding that it won't be a very deep thing so we have this we have two ideals that we find in taqwa's teachings one is the bhakti is this pure love for god the second is is very often called this is a devotion combined with or mixed in with with knowledge and i would say that talk was real teaching is that we need to have this knowledge for for taco knowledge is a little bit preliminary that we have to have some understanding first and sometimes he would say for the bhakta there are three different classes one has this understanding god is far off pray to god my father who art in heaven pray to god in heaven like that then pray to god dwelling within a little bit higher and then seeing god everywhere and god has become all this is the highest so if we have that that understanding when it comes to gyana if we have that understanding that god dwells within the heart god is the unto yahweh and god hears all of our prayers and god has become all of this then our be chad is finished we don't have to keep reasoning then we can practice that pure love of god when taqwa says pure love of god i don't believe it means that it has to be bereft of any type of gyana i think what he's saying it has to be bereft of any type of selfishness this is the term he uses that there can't be any selfish motive behind it that we don't call on god to get the wealth or to get name and fame or anything like that it has to be perfectly selfless so i take it that way this bhakti doesn't mean that we don't fortify our devotion with knowledge and with meditation and with karma yoga and everything else so we will stop here and i will close with our chant [Music] only [Music] who was stainless of infinite nature whose heart melts in sympathy for his devotees who is an embodiment of the divine and the supreme lord and ever worthy of our worship peace peace peace be unto all i thank all of you for joining us and wish everyone a a a very good week everyone please stay stay healthy and may talk or bless all of us thank you