 |
|
Swami Suddhananda |
I will start with a story I heard recently. A wise man was moving
about and a few people approached him and asked a question, “Which
one is the best, the path of Knowledge, karma, action or devotion?”
The wise man asked a very pointed question to them, “Have you seen
dogs fighting over the bone?”
“Yes, we have seen”.
“Have you seen the bone joining the fight?”
“No” was the answer.
Truth never joins the fight. The whole conflict, the whole
confusion belongs to human beings.
When we look at creation, we see absolutely no hint of conflict
or confrontation. Nature never repents. The earthquake or the
cyclone that comes, never returns to say. “I am sorry. I should not
have been in this speed, or I should not have shaken myself so
vigorously”.
Nature never repents. It just passes and we need
those changes. Today, people in Madras would welcome a devastating
cyclone even though it would cause disasters, because there is no
water here. These disasters can bring in certain welcome changes.
Inside the cyclone, if you observe, friends,
there is the ‘eye’ of the cyclone which is absolutely steady. The
cyclone at the periphery of it brings in tremendous amount of rain,
wind and disaster on the way, but the eye of the cyclone is
absolutely steady. The daredevil pilots will go through that just
for the thrill of it. Same thing also in life. Even though there are
so many different cyclones in our lives, we can see that there is a
still centre and each individual has to discover it. Without
discovering that, our lives will be a big problem. Without seeing
the eye of the cyclone, we are not going to enjoy the movements
around and, in fact, everywhere this principle is inherent.
Just see this ordinary example. Before coming
here, I changed my dress as the one I had on was crumpled. Many of
you would have done the same thing. Definitely you would not have
come here with the same dress that you put on in the morning. Why do
we change our dresses? We want to appear fresh for the occasion.
The occasion changes, the dress changes. If you
do not change your dress for the occasion, you will not be accepted.
The same thing happens with this physical body. God has given us
such a fantastic dress that is continuously changing. The most
beautiful dress in this universe is the physical body because every
day it is a new design and you do not have to do anything about it.
It is just born as a baby and thereafter it is continuously growing.
Even after it stops its growth in the height and the width, still it
goes on changing. The skin is changing, you are shrivelled up, you
are bald, you go grey, in so many ways, the dress is continuously
changing. And these changes are inevitable.
Usually, people are very unhappy about the
changes. Please understand, friends, at no time we should be
affected by the changes in life. As they say, change is the
changeless law of the universe. It must continuously change. Let me
tell you a story.
A person had been with a teacher in a monastery
and learnt some meditation. And after some years of teaching and
learning, the guru sent him to the mountains saying, “You look after
the garden there and that will be your learning ground. If you can
tend it nicely, you can learn to meditate also.” The student reached
there and tended the garden meticulously. After one year, the
student got a message from the teacher that he would be visiting the
garden, and see how it was going on. Naturally the student was very
excited and he cleaned up the whole garden. Nearby, in the
isolation, another elderly reclusive monk was living. The boy
approached him and asked, “Sir, will you please come to my place and
inspect this garden as my teacher is visiting soon? He should have a
good impression about me. Will you please look at this garden and
tell me if it is up to the mark?” The old monk said, “Of course,
son, I will come. The only trouble is that I cannot walk so far.
Will you please take me there?” The student carried the monk and
took him to the garden. The old monk saw the garden and saw it was
beautiful. “You have organised it well. Will you take me to the tree
at the centre?” There was a maple tree in the centre of the garden
and the ground around it was absolutely clean. The old monk stood
there and shook the tree up. It was the fall season, and all the
leaves of the tree were yellow. With a little shaking up, the leaves
started falling. When the leaves started falling, the boy
tremblingly said, “Sir, what exactly are you doing?” The old monk
said, “Son, no autumnal garden is complete without the falling
leaves. Fallen leaves are a part of it. Otherwise the garden is
incomplete.”
Changes! If it does not happen in life, it is not
a life. Tragedies, comedies, name it as you like. In fact, tragedies
do not happen. We consider an event as tragedy. A story comes to my
mind.
A man had a few horses. His son took them to the
forest for grazing and when he returned home, four horses were
missing. All the villagers came up and said, “We are very sorry. You
have lost four horses”. Then the gentleman said, “How do you know
this is not going to bring me good luck?” When the one who has lost
says it is going to give him good luck, what do you say? That is how
life is. When you accept your life, nobody has anything to comment.
When a person knows how to accept it, he does not need anybody’s
sympathy.
To continue the story, after two days, those
domesticated horses returned home with four wild horses. The
villagers were really impressed. So they went to congratulate him.
“Sir, we are happy that you now have eight horses, instead of four
horses. Four new horses!” “How do you know this is not going to
bring me bad luck?” said the man. The villagers went back. And then
it so happened that when the son was breaking in the wild horses,
one horse gave such a kick that the boy fell down and broke his
spine. The villagers returned. “We are really sorry for you and your
son for such a bad luck”. Again the man said, “How do you know this
may not bring me some good luck?” The villagers did not know what to
say. It so happened, after a few days, the king was going to a
battle and the army was conscripting every able-bodied youngster.
But when they came to the man’s house, they saw that the young man
was bedridden. They left him and went away. The villagers never
returned.
You never know what will come. Either the poverty
or the prosperity, by itself, it is nothing. Nothing is a curse or a
blessing. Say ‘water’. Water can quench your thirst or you might
drown yourself in it. Can you call the water a blessing or a curse?
If you know how to swim, it is a water sport, if you do not know it
is a burial ground.
Fire – is it a blessing or a curse? If you use
it, it is a blessing. If you misuse it, it is a curse.
Use the plane and you can go around the world or
misuse it and hit the World Trade Center.
Nothing in this universe by itself is good or
bad. That is where comes the human individual. Among all the species
in this universe, except human beings, nobody can cause a deliberate
disaster. There will never be a planning among tigers, “Let us kill
these men tonight”. Never there will be a congregation of all lions
or snakes to hurt anyone deliberately. Neither will nature do such
planning.
Except the human being, nobody is agitated or
restless or suffering in life. Beautifully the Upanishad will say,
“The earth is in meditation, the mountain is in meditation, the
ocean is in meditation,” meaning thereby that everything in this
universe is in meditation, except the human being who is in
agitation. Nobody else is in agitation. And even if they are in
agitation, they do not know that they are agitated. The human being
alone is self-conscious. See this example.
May be there is an Afghan hound, a great Dane or
a Pomeranian and there is a mongrel also. And these dogs have no
sense of superiority or inferiority. But the owner of the Afghan
hound will not move with the owner of the mongrel. The governor is
walking along with this Afghan hound and this ordinary person is
walking along with his mongrel. If they meet, they will not look at
each other. Suppose they reach the beach and set the dogs free.
Immediately the Afghan hound and the mongrel will run to each other
and begin to play. But the owners will not look at each other as
they are self-conscious. There is nothing called pride in knowledge.
Knowledge is not proud. Man is proud of knowledge.
The roles are not proud. Governor, Prime
Minister, Secretary, Director General, does it matter? Who cares?
“The King is dead, Long live the king!” The post continues, the
persons filling the post continuously disappear. But the arrogance
that the individual has, the posts do not have. It is the person who
is in agitation.
Today, in our civilisation, in our society, in
the name of education, we completely missed this very salient, very
important factor. I came across a situation. I will share it with
you, friends.
I was in Rishikesh. Rishikesh is in the foothills
of the Himalayas, a lovely place with the flowing Ganga lovely to
look at. I was going for a walk on the banks of the Ganga early
morning and there was a little sound, a little noise, very unusual
for the Himalayan atmosphere. Attracted by the sound, I went to the
ashram nearby and there was excitement. What has happened there is
that one gentleman had closed himself up in one of the ashram rooms
for the last three days and had not opened the room. Then the
management got a little worried. So they broke open the room and
what they found was a disaster. The man was unconscious, drunk,
bottles lying around. He was a sadhu in monk’s clothes. The
management was shocked. They brought the man out, washed him, and
cleaned him up. When everything returned to normal, I was going back
to my place. A gentleman from Dehradun was also coming with me and
he asked me a question, “Swamiji, how come a sadhu drinks?” I said,
“Your question is wrong. You are asking me as though you must drink
in order to be a sadhu. Sadhu does not drink. A drunkard has become
a sadhu. This point must be seen. Three months ago, the same
gentleman was a junior executive in BHEL. Suppose you invited him
for a management talk, he would have given a brilliant talk, quoting
different management principles, then people will say, “Oh! This
sadhu is a management guru!” The sadhu is not a management guru. A
management guru has become a sadhu.
You can extend this to any part of life. We say
politicians are corrupt. No politician is corrupt. A corrupt person
happens to be a politician. A politician is a position. It cannot be
corrupt. No managing director is arrogant. An arrogant person
happens to be an MD. Positions have no emotions. So, if you see this
process, you can see that everywhere the individual reflects,
imposes his limitation on the posts. Roles or the posts have
absolutely no flaws. They are flawless. Can we say MD is the most
powerful person? No, the MD can be most powerful in the headquarters
running the administration. But the moment he goes down the lift and
gets into the car, now the driver is the MD. Inside the car, the MD
is not the MD. He is just a passenger.
All our studies are geared to creating positions;
we are creating engineers, doctors, management geniuses, we are
creating every type of post and the human being, the individual is
neglected. As a result, a little emotion completely counteracts the
entire achievement of an individual. You can be the President of the
most powerful country in the world. Clinton and a little 20-year-old
girl are good enough to destroy his reputation. Do not say the
President slept with a woman. No President sleeps with a woman. A
man sleeps with a woman. ‘President’ is a position.
The role gets the bad name. In reality, the
person must change. And again we need not crucify the person either,
as the person does not know any better. Our educational system does
not touch our lives. We say, “Knowledge is power”. Which knowledge
is power? Physics, chemistry, mathematics? No, because the
individual dealing with the knowledge is fragile. Roles are not
great or small. Do we give the Oscar to the role or the actor? You
give it to the person. The actor gets the Oscar, not the roles. But
in life, we are giving Oscar to the roles. Our lives are so
competitive, everywhere there is hierarchy. As a result, the roles
have become very vicious. There is tremendous conflict, and long
before that inter-personal conflict begins, an intra-personal
conflict begins, long before that intra-personal conflict begins,
inter-religious conflict. You can see that. That is why religion
also does not solve the problem. No religion can solve the problem.
Which one will be accepted by all the people? Which thinking will be
accepted when religion itself does not fix one universal principle?
We are respected not for who we are but what we
have. We are accepted in society not for who we are but because of
what we have. You come walking down to the friend’s house, you will
have a different reception, come in a bicycle, different reception,
auto, different reception, car, Benz car, different reception. That
is why personal relationships become a disaster, politics a
disaster, sadhus are a disaster, religion is a disaster. Roles are
not the truth about ourselves. Roles are needed to be effective, to
celebrate life as such. But roles are not the ultimate. One must
know himself. This is the first lesson everyone must learn.
Take a simple example. Today, here, in this
place, many friends have gathered, who is the most important person
in the gathering? If I ask this question, we are trained to say,
“The chief guest, Swamiji”. Thank you for saying that. But that is
not the truth. Say it is a celebration, a dance performance. For
this performance to be very enjoyable and successful, everybody must
participate. The dancer must dance. The musicians must play in time,
the sound system must be correct, the electrician, the man who
provides the chairs, audience must be there. Everything must be
there. Suppose at the right time, as the dancer is performing, the
electrician switches off the lights or the musician goes his own way
or just at that right time, the audience gets up and goes. It takes
the dancer, audience, singer, musician, electrician, all of them to
have a wonderful evening, but anyone can sabotage it. That is the
most important point to be seen. Anyone role is good enough to
destroy the event.
Today the individual is important not because of
who he is but because of what he has. So we are desperate to have
things.
Today’s generation is exposed to what we call
‘knowledge’, and there is nothing wrong in it. But the individual
must know himself. Or else the moment he occupies a position, his
anger will be a curse, his limitations will be a problem.
You must know about the positions, attain the
heights, but the individual must be taken care of. If the individual
is nice, the position gains a glory. If the Prime Minister is a nice
person, the position is used well. Drunker driver – you do not say
that the car is drunk even if the car collides. Positions do not
collide, persons collide.
Roles are beautiful. Roles must change, but the
actor must be sensible. And that actor is a Changeless Reality, and
that must be seen long before you extend your role outside.
If the ‘I’ goes crazy, the stomach is not able to
take it. Take ‘money’. The money does not go into the stomach. The
money is parked in bank accounts. So how much money can you keep?
Millions and Billions?
If only we can be aware about ourselves, and that
Self is who you are, and that is something steady, Eternal, ever the
same.
Suppose I ask you, “Who are you?” each one here
will start the answer with the same word “I”.
“I”...what?
“President, secretary, rich, poor”... The
universal first name is ‘I’.
Once you recognise the universal first name as to
who you are, roles become beautiful. When you are here, you are the
top man of the company, when you go home, your wife is the top or
the husband is the top, or if you have a child, the child becomes a
governor of the house. If the baby wakes up at 2’ o’clock at night –
you have to spend sleepless nights even if you are the governor of
the State. The child dictates your routine.
You can play king, you can play beggar. All
because there is one Steadiness, the eye of the cyclone which
remains ever the same. Role change and should change. Do not worry
about the changing roles. When you are Changeless, the changing
roles become a beauty. No more arrogance. No more security or
insecurity. You are a happy man in life!
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
|
