Video 35

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna read by Swami Atmajnanananda (12/04/20)

[Music] 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 srima krishna we are on the chapter the master with the brahmo devotees and it takes place over a few different dates over the span of a couple of months this i mentioned last time is a little bit curious the previous entry was november 1882 without any date and we finished that now we're on december 1882. so for some reason and was not very particular during november and december there are several of them like that and until we get probably to the next chapter then we'll get dates again maybe yes january 1st will be the next so this is sometime in december 1882 i am has now been coming to srama krishna for a good number of months and their relationship even from the very beginning of course was was very very close but now m cannot live without seeing him but like that from the very beginning and takur of course looked upon him as one of his inner circle devotees in the afternoon suramar krishna was seated on the west porch of his room in the temple garden at dakshinishwar among others baburam ram dayal and m were present these three were going to spend the night with the master m intended to stay the following day also for he was having his christmas holidays baburam had only recently begun to visit the master okay now we don't read about it here but there's a section in the great master describing this first night that babaram stayed with srama krishna at dakshinashwar he came probably uh shortly after swamiji came first would have been rakal from ibrahim then swami vaikananda and then [Music] later swami premananda and he was a couple of years older than the others he was born in 1981 and uh swamiji and and raqqa from brahmananda were born within i think 10 days of each other within two weeks of each other at least two years later now this is very significant and interesting this night and as i say we don't get all of the details here we find them in the great master this ram dayal was someone known to srama krishna and baburam happened to run into him and they were going there and then takwa invited them to spend the night there as we we read in the great master that taqwa had some conversation with with the babaram and asked him many questions belonged to a very pious family of in a village called atpur midway between kolkata and uh jardimbating and kumartukur many people will stop there on their way if they can go for the pilgrimage there his mother was greatly devoted to srama krishna matangani devi and his sister krishna bhavani was married to balarambos so there was a strong family connection and i don't know if he was a classmate or went to the same school but he also knew raquel it doesn't seem like he was one of the brahmo members and he wasn't i wasn't a great student he wasn't interested in and studied too much and talked with teasum sometimes as you studied for your exams he knew that he wasn't cut out for that type of life he was very pure and this is the special feature about the zubaburram that takur always needed someone to stay with him as an attendant and for some time latu was there latu miraj who became swami bhutan for some time swami brahmananda but taco used to say the two of them half the time they were experiencing different spiritual states and he needed somebody to look after him all of the time he wanted this baboon not not quite at this stage yet but after some time because he said in baburam of all of the disciples this is including swamiji and swami brahmananda he was pure to the very bone he was the purest of all of them and takwa said when he was in certain spiritual states he wouldn't go into sovereign deep states of samadhi or ecstasy he couldn't bear the touch of anyone who wasn't perfectly pure so he wanted his babaram to stay with him and of course eventually he he renounced everything and became one of the stalwarts but this night that i'm talking about uh when they went to sleep first of all takur only stepped a couple hours at night if that and half the time he's in ecstasy but in the middle of the night he went and he woke up this ram dayal of course was there they were either sleeping on the floor on the veranda outside it usually depended and this is december so a little bit cool probably inside but uh and you know he woke up also and each each time that tucker woke up this ramadan he asked about narendra and have you seen him lately he hasn't come lately such a wonderful boy my can't live without seeing him i feel it like my heart being rung like a wet cloth like a gumcha a wet gum and you please tell him to come in and see me and then he went back to bed and they fell asleep and then shortly later he came and woke up this ram dayal again same thing went on several times throughout the night and there's a baburam who hadn't yet met narendra apparently he thought to himself how the master loves this boy and how cruel he is not to come more often later of course they became of course inseparable friends we read many times that they had a little clash or swamiji would scold him about this and then this or that and then swamiji would come and fall at his feet and beg his forgiveness and said taco loved you so much but these were the rare things actually they had a very very close sweet loving relationship and so the final day of swamiji's life it was swami premananda that he spent most time with went for long walk with him and told him about his future plans for the mutt and everything on the very final day so this is baburam this antpur is also the place where swamiji and several of the direct disciples went on christmas eve of course not knowing it was christmas eve and they lit a toonie fire and outside in the back of the of the house and they sat around and as i say without knowing it was christmas eve somehow swamiji started talking about the life of christ and the disciples how they renounced everything and he said let us all resolve now to to renounce the world and then they all took the their monastic names it wasn't all of them of course some some did it a little bit later i don't remember how many 11 or something like that and you know if you go there you'll see there's a beautiful relief with the statues and all of them there and uh swamiji wanted the name of swami ramakrishnanda but he when he saw shashi who had served him so much he said no you're the one who deserves that name and at that time swamiji probably took the name vivid shananda he used different names when he traveled he tried to travel incognito a little bit so sometimes he used the name sachitlan on the sometimes vivideshananda possibly sometimes vivekanando also and it seems that before he left for the west that the maharaja of ketni was the one who encouraged him to use that name vivekananda as we know and he he was very instrumental in so many ways he provided a lot of the clothes and and monetary support for for swamiji and helped looked after his mother he was his disciple a few years younger than swahili and swamiji relied on him and he loved swamiji very much and then died very tragic death he fell off the roof some people think pushed maybe some intrigue palace intrigue or something but that was also a big blow to swamiji so this is that night that i'm talking about that learned for the first time live talk with tremendous love for swami vaikananda narendra so it simply says babaram had only recently begun to visit the master master to the devotees a man becomes liberated even in this life when he knows that god is the doer of all things okay now no distinction each would occur to egypt he's just saying that one can be liberated in life we wonder sometimes all of this business of samadhi and the body falling off in 21 days that how do we become even how do we become liberated in this life there are many ways through path of devotion and other types of realizations the knowledge here he's saying that one particular thing who knows that god is the doer of all things that means that we understand that this ego is is some phantom it's not a real thing this scent of i that we have is based on all sorts of false identification with uh we say with body mind and senses but most mostly with with the mind and mostly with a personality and we have the sense that we're responsible for everything that we do and yet when we analyze we wonder why do things happen the way they happen huh a very curious thing i remember this will sound like a very odd example to use but many many years ago i happened to see a movie it wasn't a very good movie but there was one interesting aspect to it it was called the freshman and probably no one has ever seen it it wasn't a well-known movie and marlon brando played the role of the godfather in it but kind of a spoof of the godfather kind of making fun of the role that he had in the famous godfather and somebody else was in it and he was a freshman going to college and uh all sorts of mishaps happened when he got there he lost his bag and then somebody came and found it and and offered to to put the bag in his car and drive him to his dorm and he did it there and then by accident they forgot to take the bag out of the trunk and then later they happened to run into each other and he grabbed hold of him and said where's my bag and he said oh yeah you come and meet me and then he went there and and he introduced them to his father who was marlon brando the godfather and then uh they said you know well now that you're here if you want to earn a little money we can arrange something this and that a whole long thing and it seemed like one incident led to another then at the end we find out that each and every step was planned they laid it trapped for him so when it seemed like he was making a decision at each stage they had set it up for him and when circumstances were just happening it was pre-planned so i'm not saying everything in life is like that but sometimes we look back and we wonder how did i end up here from where i started as a young boy how did i end up here and we say that oh well this happened to that happen oh i thought it was just chance that that happened is it possible it wasn't just chance huh all of these different events that took place now when i look back in my own life and my first trip to india this happened and that happened and i happened to see this book and i happened to see that book i wonder was it was a chance or it was a trap blade for me of course it's a little egotistical to think somebody went to the trouble to lay a trap for me but in any event the point is we really don't know why and how things happen there's all cause and effect it's a very odd type of thing but what taku is really saying is get rid of this idea of uh i am the doer this pride that we have that those who can get rid of this strong belief in in their own power that uh without realizing there's a higher power behind us he gives the example in another place that when the cooking pot is on the fire and the and everything is boiling and the vegetables are jumping up and down they think they're jumping up and down with their own power he says but as soon as it's removed from the fire and everything cools down where's their power to jump up and down so it's not our own power there's something inside of us this this divine power is there uh without which we couldn't do anything we wouldn't exist so here he's saying that this will be he'll give other things he'll just other reasons how we can become liberated in life but here he says when he knows that god is the doer of all things once kaiser came here with shambhu malik shambhu malik was another he he lived nearby in induction and he was another devotee of srama krishna i said to him not even a leaf moves except by the will of god now we have to understand all of these things i i when i first read these things i i think to myself oh god spending all day long trying to decide which way this leaf is going to fall and which way that leaf is going to fall it doesn't mean that if the whole thing is is this projection out of this divine cosmic mind of god then everything is happening according to that according to that cosmic dreamer and everything seems to be the individual's doing it and is the wind blowing it this way or that way or because the dream is taking place any other different ways of understanding these are very difficult things to to know how and why things take place but then he says where is man's free will all are under the will of god so ultimate free will do we have any individual free will this is another question this is another theory we can say that tucker also talks about that we have a certain amount of free will and we have that illustration of the cow that's tethered to a post and it can graze within a circle described by the the radius which is the length of rope but it can't go beyond that so it has the ability to a little freedom within but it's restricted so sometimes taco uses this illustration there's one time when he says oh i've heard that before is this from the english men this illustration so we're not quite sure about it but uh in gita and other things we get this sliding scale of free will that the more we're bound by rajis and thomas by our desires and by our old some scholars the less free will we have and the more we develop satura the more we can make decisions based on something other than desire decision is based on desire it's not free that means the desire is making me make that decision if the desire is there and i can say say we teach children that okay there's a piece of cake there you have a desire to eat it but your friend is there so you curb that desire and say let me share it with my friend a little free will is there to a certain extent but if we analyze we can take well that child has that some scatter which is making him make that decision very hard to say this uh what is causing what we we just read this morning about lava kusha huh love acoustic was it this morning or last night yeah that you know the story of ahalia and how her husband go to mamuni got very angry at his wife indra was lusting after his wife's she was very beautiful and he came in the form of of gotumamuni she had no idea that it wasn't her husband so when when he came back and heard that he had come to her that way he was furious and he cursed her may you turn into a pillar of stone something like that and so it happened and then later he found out the whole story so he said ah what can i do to get out of this he said in tereta yuga ram will come rama will come and and the touch of his feet then you'll get your human form back again so it happened that way so uh some sage was saying you don't know the power of your father rama they were very angry at him they were his enemies at that time and he said no we know this whole story that but you're saying it's the power of rama who can say what is the real cause and effect here did she did she get back her human form because of the touch of rama or was it the power of the words of the sage gotama who can say so the same thing taku used to say very hard to say what exactly the actual cause of something is there are visible causes and remote causes to things so sometimes something will happen and some will say it must have been my karma huh something i did in the past lifetime say we have a car accident god forbid we have a car accident and somebody else will say what are you talking about you went to a red light why how is that not the cause of it now both can be true both can be true that we did something we were destined to have some accident ourselves but this is the way it happened so we really can't say better to have a little humility and say that yes we're acting as if we're in charge of things but we know deep down that anything may happen we don't know the reason for everything and we don't know even if we do things perfectly how they'll turn out so when we say everything is the will of god we can take it also that uh the way things happen may be up to us to a certain extent but the results are out of our hands and this is the attitude to take for karma yoga so where is man's free will this idea of free will is really more of a western idea and not so much in fact uh very often when takur and others are talking about it they'll use the english word word free will for the will because there's no perfectly icha or something there's no perfect equivalent to it uh and this idea of unto yamin also is very important that god within will uh encourage us will impel us will will uh inspire us to act in a particular way we have this this concept also nangta was a man of great knowledge this is totopuri srama krishnas vedantic guru who gave him sannyasa and gave him that led him to the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi nangta was a man of great knowledge he was a real ghani everything was so hum i am that he didn't care for anything that any reliance on god or surrender to god's will was was looked upon as weakness to him he didn't care for those things and detained perfection through it so we we're not criticizing him for that this is another path nangte was a man of great knowledge yet even he was about to drown himself in the ganges he stayed here 11 months at one time he suffered from stomach trouble that means he had excruciating dysentery blood dysentery this horrible thing in and talk for himself suffered from dysentery quite often the excruciating pain made him lose control over himself and he wanted to drown himself in the river now it's not ordinary suicide his feeling was i've attained everything whether the body stays or it doesn't stay it makes no difference to me so he thought let the body go if it's so much trouble if it's keeping the mind from being lost in in samadhi then what's the point of it that was his attitude there was a long shoal near the bathing got however far he went into the river he couldn't find water above his knees then he understood everything now what did he understand we have a little footnote here he realized that man is not free even to kill himself that everything depends on the will of the divine mother then it says see introduction page 31. so there's a longer discussion about this but anyhow he came back and some somehow uh it was a great revelation for him and he felt that the reason he'd come to dakshineshwar not simply uh for the sake of initiating srama krishna and leading him to nirvikalpa samadhi but so that his spiritual life could could be rounded out he had he had reached the roof but now he could see so many ways of getting up and going back down again then takwa says at one time i was very ill and was about to cut my throat with a knife we don't know exactly what he's referring to we know when he had his first realization in the kali temple that he talked about that this is also a bit of a of just a general expression that ready to kill myself ready to cut my throat with a knife it doesn't always mean literally that way but when it was in the kali temple it seemed to be quite literal because he saw the knife hanging on on the wall anyhow i was very ill and was about to cut my throat with a knife therefore i say oh mother i am the machine and thou art the operator i am the chariot and thou art the driver i move is thou movest me i do as thou makest me do now remember he says this is the sign of someone who is liberated in life so we shouldn't expect to even understand what this means at this point we have to understand first the hollow nature of this eye the unreal nature of this ego that is belongs to maya as long as we cling to this idea that i am doing everything then it doesn't make sense to say god is the doer one divine mother is doing everything i'm just an instrument it's a very high ideal the devotee sang kirtan in the master's room dwell o lord o lover of khakti in the vrndavan of my heart and my devotion unto thee will be thyradha dearly loved my body will be nanda's home my tenderness will be yashoda my longing for deliverance will be the gentle gopi maids lift the govardhan of my sin and slay my six unyielding passions fierce as the demons sent by kamsa sweetly play the flute of thy grace charming the milk cow of my mind abide in the pasture of my soul dwell by the yamana of my yearning under the bannion of my hope for ever gracious to thy servant and if not but the cowherd's love can hold thee in brindavan's veil then lord let tha to become thy cowherd and thy slave. again they sang seeing o bird that nestles deep within my heart seeing a word that sits on the kalpa tree of brahmin seeing god's everlasting praise taste o bird of the for fruit of the kalpa tree dharma artha kama moksha single bird he alone is the comfort of my soul sing o bird he alone is my life's enduring joy oh thou wondrous bird of my life sing aloud in my heart unceasingly sing o bird sing forevermore even as the thirsty chatuk sings for the raindrop from the cloud a devotee from nandan bagan entered the room with his friends the master looked at him and said everything inside him can be seen through his eyes as one sees the object in a room through a glass door this is not a good sign of course it could have been it's possible that he saw what what a pure soul he was but we get the impression that let him not pretend he's a very high spiritual soul that i i can see that there are some knots and twists there the devotee and his brothers always celebrated the anniversary of the brahma-samaj at their house in london bagan now we've we've seen already how many different celebrations the annual semi-annual celebrations there are in different homes of the brahma sawaj of devotees srama krishna had taken part in these festivals the evening worship began in the temples the master was seated on the small couch in his room absorbed in meditation the uh change from day to night was a time when takwo's mood automatically changed that it happened all of the time we we read about in m's very first visit that he said he saw as it was getting dark that taco became very in-drawn that his mind would automatically go into a spiritual mood at that time of course all the temple worship is going on then and you can hear the the conscience and and the gong and the and the the the bell being wrong and all of that the very uh also all these auspicious sounds and it's just a very inspiring period uh my first visit to the dakshana sword was just at that time just as it was getting dark and we could hear everything going on in the temple and just the mood changes and with it going from light to dark everything changes so taker used to say that put everything aside at that time and only think of god this is a kind of a tradition that of course it goes back to mantra and other things that uh this at the time of these sandhya periods morning to uh or early morning to day break and then in the evening again it's sunset that these are times to repeat in the month i used to wonder in calcutta as sometimes if my very first trip if you go into some some shop or restaurant or something like that and they turn the lights on that means it's just it's just gotten dark enough outside that they have to have the inside lights on and you'll see people they'll do some little things just say indicating in their own way they're just force of habit probably most of them but that there's something auspicious and once you think of god at that time you see that also on your part i used to find it very curious then of course next second they would forget it go back to whatever they were doing so the evening worship began at the temples the master was seated on the small couch in his room absorbed in meditation he went into an ecstatic mood and said a little later mother please draw him to thee he is so modest and humble he has been visiting thee was the master referring to baburam who later became one of his foremost disciples these are rhetorical questions this is i am not really wondering is is pretty certain and we can also be pretty certain that he he recognized his inner circle people he recognized and baburam was one of the ishwarakotis yeah usually in the beginning sometimes we read bubble nut also so yeah he of all the the disciples he was the one who was most loving towards the the devotees he really he was the mother of bellarmutt he was the mother of bildermatt there's so many stories that when devotees would go there how he would look after them and how he would feed them to the young monks he was also the mother but a scolding mother because he had a very high standard that he wanted them to follow if they didn't follow that they'd get a good scolding but they got an equal amount of love so he was very very sweet and pure and humble so i heard a couple of stories that we don't hear read about some of these too much one that devotees very often something devotees would be there and and they'd get caught in the rain or they couldn't go home that night and he would have the monks sleep on the floor and give them a cut to sleep on one time they they got caught in the rain their clothes were soaked he gave the girl of the monks to wear and there was this another incident or swami abraham he was he was after after swami permanent he was the manager of biller mutt for many many many many years everybody knew him and uh he was a tremendous gyani and and uh very very highly respected he was kind of being trained up by baba ramirez to become the next manager and uh one day it was uh maybe taco's birthday some big festival day some devotees came very late in the day so swami permanente always had to feed them even if he himself had to go and cook something no one would leave without getting fed so he said to swami abhinav what was his name he said go and and see if there's anything uh and it's still in the kitchen that we can give to these devotees and he went there was nothing and then swami permanente said to him did you yourself take prasad and he said yes you yourself to prasad knowing that perhaps someone will come late and perhaps there'll be nothing there and he felt a little embarrassed and then i heard for the rest of his life he never took food took prasad on the festival days until that night when when everything was closed and no one else would come so anyhow so it certainly it has to be when takwa says mother please draw him to thee he is so modest and humble he has been visiting me that he was talking about this his birthday is coming up soon i think december 23rd perhaps the master explained the different kinds of samathi to the devotees knew all of these different things and and the different terms for everything caitanya samadhi all these different things no one's ever who knows where he got all these things from and how many different ways one goes into samadhi and he had all of these experiences creeping like an ant jumping like a monkey hopping like a bird all the different things that uh that he had experienced and bhava samadhi and with visions without visions so many different things we we read how forbidden it is to tell anybody about our spiritual experiences then we say well taku did it all the time we we shouldn't compare ourselves to him he had a reason he wanted to give us that hope and that conviction that these things are possible and give us some inkling of of the joy that's that comes from these things so that we'll strive to realize them if he hadn't done it who would know that these things are possible and the extent in a variety of different spiritual experiences just reading things in books it wouldn't mean anything but hearing from his lips these things it was tremendously important that's why all of his reminiscences all of olive talking about his spiritual experiences his sadhana and his visions and his different types of samathi these are so invaluable really then the conversation turned to the joy and suffering of life why did god create so much suffering okay first of all there's the assumption that we're going to blame god for all of it of course if taco is saying god is responsible for everything then we can ask that question then we've we have to consider our own karma sometimes and other factors again as i say these are not easy questions m once with the asagar said in the mood of peak with the assadar he was orthodox hindu in some ways and in other ways a little bit of a skeptic and agnostic he was an interesting mixture of things on one hand he was a great reformist and on the other hand he wasn't really a member of the brahma-samaj and in that way uh a very sincere soul but taka said he didn't he didn't realize that gold hidden within his heart and was very close to him because he worked for him then they had a falling out there was a kind of sad thing that m students didn't do very well in the exams one time and vidyasigar accused him that look you're always visiting that pago takur that made meredith geneswar and even taking some of these boys there sometimes that's why they didn't do well so m he was was equally high-minded vidyasugar was very high-minded he or something happened with him also he was criticized for something and he gave up his position as president of uh of the sanskrit college i think something like that and so m was the same he said no i no one will will criticize takur that way and everything and he quit and then he was in big trouble but before that they were very close we read when he brought takur to uh to vidyasega's house that they were serving everybody and they went to serve him and he said oh it's not necessary don't make a fuss serving him he's a member of the household so i'm just quoting him once vidyasagar said in the mode of peak what is the use of calling on god just think of this incident at one time genghis khan plundered a country and imprisoned many people the number of prisoners rose to about a hundred thousand the commander of his army said to him your majesty who will feed them it is risky to keep them with us it will be equally dangerous to release them what shall i do changus khan said that's true what can be done well have them killed the order was accordingly given to cut them to pieces now god saw this slaughter didn't he but he didn't stop it in any way therefore i don't need god whether he exists or not i don't derive any good from him i i don't think this really means that he was a complete atheist or anything even a little bit of that agnostic thing and it says in the mood of peak so who is he complaining to plenty of god really so he wasn't really a a pure atheist master now this is this is i think is the best answer that anybody can give is it possible to understand god's actions and his motives so we we have to learn sometimes that there aren't answers for every question just because there's a question doesn't mean there's an answer for it and if there's no answer then we have to ask ourselves is it a good question is it a reasonable question can we really expect an answer and then taco will again talk about the limitations of the human mind that we're trying to get answers we're trying to pour in a huge amount of of liquid into a very small container it's it can't hold it that this mind is bound by time causing and time space and causation and some of these questions are too big that they go beyond the limitations of the mind they don't have easy or good answers for us so master is it possible to understand god's action and his motive he creates he preserves and he destroys can we ever understand why he destroys i say to the divine mother o mother i do not need to understand please give me love for thy lotus feet other times he'll say of course there can be good without bad always be these pairs of opposites up and down heathen cold this is the nature of things that there has to be all sorts of things in god's creation there'll be flowering trees and there'll be some that are also poisonous trees this the nature of things so i say to the divine mother o mother i do not need to understand please give me love for thy lotus feet the aim of human life is to attain bhakti as for other things the mother knows best when we talk about attaining knowledge this isn't the knowledge that that we get and this idea of becoming all-knowing it doesn't mean that we can answer all of these questions there was a school of the buddhists the kita sankiyas i think it's called that they believed that but it was all knowing that he knew the number of insects in the world he would have to know the number of grains of sand he's all-knowing but the vietnamic idea is that we don't know everything in particular it's impossible what we know is that just as knowing gold we know everything made of gold if we know the real nature and value and worth of gold then we know the real value of bracelets and earrings and anklets and all of those things so all knowing in that sense but uh if we attain god realization will will we be able to answer these questions why is there so much suffering in the world in everything if anybody could have answered he could have he doesn't tell us he'll give different possible attitudes to take towards these things it's our karma it's the the play of the divine mother the the all different possible attitudes to take but no one definitive type of answer this isn't the type of knowledge we get when we attain knowledge so the aim of human life is to attain bhakti as for other things the mother knows best i've come to the garden to eat mangoes what is the use of my calculating the number of trees branches and leaves i only eat the mangoes i don't need to know the number of trees and leaves this is also a very typical buddhist attitude you you've all heard i'm sure this story there's a parable that butu used to tell of the man who was shot with an arrow and it was a poison arrow that was in danger of dying they had to pull the hour very quickly and when the doctor came he said first i want to know who shot it i want to know what village they came from what cast they belong to what their reason a whole long list of things then the buddha said to his disciples tell me what will happen if he waits until he gets all of these answers before removing the arrow and saving him and they said he'll die before that and he said yes in the same way don't bother about all these different questions that we want to remove that arrow we want to remove that ignorance we want to attain the goal of life we want to eat the mangoes if we if we say no i won't eat the mangoes till i know how many twigs and branches and trees there are and everything we'll never get to it so this is this is what it means to have some priorities and some perspective on life slept that night on the floor of the master's room we for some reason m doesn't explain all of the other things but somehow it uh probably swami permanente told swami sharon and that's how it got into the great master it was an early hour of the morning about two or three o'clock the room was dark srama christian was seated on his bed and now and then conversed with the devotees so this is when he got up probably slept for a couple of hours and as we said as i told you he got up several times before that but that was enough for him and he wasn't one of those nice people who says oh they're sleeping let them sleep because he knew this was a rare occasion to to come and stay with him and he was always in an ecstatic mood early morning also when he when he woke up first of all he's in ecstasy most of the night not really sleeping but whenever he got up he would clap his hands and dance sing and dance sometimes just by himself go to all of the pictures in his room and then with folded hands address all of them and so he wanted them to see these things and to to sit for meditation he would say don't waste the whole night now sit in meditation or some spiritual conversation so he seated on his bed probably have in ecstasy and now and then converse with the devotees master now we get a very important discussion on daya and maya there's a very important theme in the teachings of srama krishna remember that daya compassion and maya attachment are two different things attachment means the feeling of mindness towards one's relatives it is a loved one feels for one's parents one's brother one sister one's wife and children compassion is the loved one feels for all beings of the world it is an attitude of equality if you see anywhere an instance of compassion as in vidyasagar so this is this is what i was saying before that when we see taqwa criticizing somebody we have to look at the other side how much he praises them also one very good example is ishaan there's a whole long chapter advice to ishaan and we think taqwa he thinks that ishan is an idiot how are we scolding him and saying you didn't listen to me and you're doing this and at this stage of your life but we have to see how many times he prays this ishan he said every bit is as compassionate and and and charitable as vidyasagar swamiji also praised him uh swamiji was actually friends with the ishan's son and that's how he would go to the house and he knew this ishan very well that way so uh here we see that he's praising this vidyasagar because uh he had that that love and compassion for strangers these people who came to him were unknown people anybody who was poor and needy and lacking of education widows that he would do whatever he could to help so this maya and and daya there are two different things but they're not two different things and taqueria emphasizes this there are two different things because one is so restricted but we don't discard maya we discard the limitations of maya because it's still love there's something very beautiful and wonderful about the love that a mother has for a child or a husband for a wife or a child for a parent there's nothing wrong with that taqwa he'll say take that love but expand it so that we feel that love for everyone is it possible no it's not possible it's not possible for a mother to love somebody else's child the way she loves her own child but uh it can it can be expanded so that at least a portion of it so so that we we're not ready to just kick the other the other person child out of the room to feed our own child that it'll be expanded and we know that there are many people like that they'll work in the orphanages and and do child care and they'll love all of these other children they'll have a little special love for their own child that's okay but it's not so restrictive so the difference between maya and daya is is is one of degree it's not an absolute distinction because they're both love both love and love and attachment now swamiji emphasizes the point that the the monk has an advantage here because the monk doesn't have his own child his own wife and therefore can love everyone equally the beautiful statement that he made with when he had a conversation with this ingersoll there was a man named robert ingersoll who was also a lecturer during swamiji's time there were many people who gave lectures and people would come there were no movie theaters at that time no television and everything so this was one way people would pass the time they would go and listen to speakers and he said that i believe that this world is everything and the most sensible thing is to get whatever we can whatever enjoy we can out of this world to squeeze the orange of the world and get the jews from it so swamiji said i agree with you but i know a better way of squeezing the orange and he said because i i have no wife or children or anything like that that i can love everyone equally and he went on i don't remember all of it something like that so he was saying that yes what you do is fine he said but you do it my way and you'll get every single drop of juice from the orange you will enjoy it more without that attachment to it with this maya the attachment means that they're suffering they're suffering because there'll always be separation there'll always be disappointment that's inevitable in life and this attachment means that we ourselves are benefiting from it it's not pure that uh oh how sad i am how lonely i'll be if anything happens to you it comes back to us a little bit so there's a little bit of selfishness even though it can be even the love that a mother has for a child a little bit a drop of that will be there whereas it can be completely absent when we do it with regard to others so takara talks about this diet now we shouldn't get confused when he says that the compassion who are you to have compassion for others huh then he's saying okay my is good that is is is much better there's something higher than that called prema love don't do it out of compassion but do it out of love do it seeing god in in or don't do it from out of pity or or thinking that uh i can help somebody else there's there's even a higher way of doing it so he's not putting down daya he's saying that compared to maya dies is far greater but compared to daya prima or love is much greater so we again we have to see things in in perspective so remember this is two in the morning three in the morning he's talking to them remember the diet compassion and my attachment are two different things attachment means the feeling of minus towards one's relatives it's very interesting that in in ordinary usage is a very nice thing that's a very positive thing we won't name children unless it's something positive that it means there's a feeling yes you belong to me there's a mamata and vedante is a very bad thing it means that i have a feeling that i can possess something so this the eye and the mind i and mine of the of the devotee are very much different the eye and mind of the gyani these are things that we have to get rid of that i i'm that this i am responsible that i do everything and and things belong to me i own them i possess them so that mama that's a bad thing but uh this this feeling that uh he says attachment feeling of mindness towards my relatives it's good on one level that we don't they're not strangers to us we love them they belong to us we belong to them it's a very good thing we should feel that otherwise we're very dry people but at the same time we don't possess them especially parents and children sometimes the parents feel that uh yeah the children they they only exist to please us i'm a scientist my child should become a scientist that's what i want we have to think what do they want and really let them to be happy in the any way that they're they're happy don't let it be the way i want them to be happy then that's this minus is a bad thing so attachment means the feeling of mind is towards one relatives it is the loved one feels for one's parents one's brother one sister one's wife and children compassion is the love one feels for all beings of the world who had this compassion swamiji swamiji had it srama krishna had it but he is he was lost in samadhi for the time he came for a different purpose but we see it when he was traveling with mata babu and he was there was famine and he was a village and these poor people were there and he said i'm not budging unless you give them something to eat give them some cloth and all of that he had it of course but for swamiji it was a passion this feeling with for all beings it didn't matter who where or anything it is an attitude of equality if you see anywhere an instance of compassion as in vidyasagar know that it is due to the grace of god through compassion one serves all beings see who are you to serve beings who are you to have compassion we have to understand that everything it has to be seen through his eyes what is he feeling at the time when he's when he's saying all of this this compassion he's talking about now it's not looking down on anybody that means it's real full unselfish love for others maya also comes from god so it's as i say it's not a bad thing through maya god makes one serve one's relatives but one thing should be remembered maya keeps us in ignorance and entangles us in the world it also makes us suffer whereas zendaya makes our hearts pure and gradually unties our bonds so it's the same thing only maya has this tinge of thomas and rajas and daya is a pure sattva that is helping us overcome our attachments god cannot be realized without purity of heart one receives the grace of god by subduing the passions now he's telling us what is purity of heart when we're free from lust anger and greed then one sees god i tried many things in order to conquer lust now what was that for talk with this is a joke we can hardly imagine i think he says one time i had a slight feeling of lust one time in his whole life and he said mother you give me that feeling again i'm going to kill myself and that was the end of it but at least so we know that if he can feel that then of course it's nothing for us to be surprised about when i was 10 or 11 years old and lived in kamapakura i first experienced samadhi he was of course walking with a group of women i believe who were going to this vishalakshi temple and he saw uh in in the sky was the rainy season suddenly this black dark rain clouds came and covered the whole sky and these beautiful white cranes came and just seeing the beauty of that the white cranes in the black background he lost all out of consciousness and fell down as i was passing through a paddy field i saw something was overwhelmed there are certain characteristics of god vision one sees light feels joy and experiences the upsurge of a great current in one's chest like the bursting of a rocket the next day ram and ram dayal returned to calcutta m spent the day and the night with the master this is the end of that day and we'll start next time as i say it only says december 1882 it's page 161 so we will stop here have our chant [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 so i thank all of you for joining this class and uh we will see you next time please check your emails we've just recently sent out uh the schedule for next month uh we'll have a guest speaker with a zoom session next month and jeffrey long who's spoken here several different times unfortunately we won't have our christmas eve program because there's no way to do it well without everyone being here and singing in the kids but we're trying to encourage the kids to do some video presentation that we can put on the website you can see it by youtube and we'll let you know about that later also