Do Visit my very own 'Food' Blog' for delicious meals

Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Marathon Blogger Prompt 2- Thirst



It’s a thirst for knowledge that makes us go to places where we wouldn’t go on our own.
Visit to any place/venue is an adventure by itself, be it at a restaurant, movie, or even at a spiritual discourse.
If you have been to a spiritual discourse, you will realize that there is nothing new that you are likely to learn. Every discourse has same message to give. The magic mantra to peace and love is to watch your thoughts.
But thoughts play a very tricky game. Have you watched your thoughts today?
Lets do one experiment.

Sit straight, cross-legged and close your eyes.
Think only of a flower. The flower is red in color. It has sweet fragrance. It has velvet touch.
Set your alarm clock for twenty minutes. You must only think of this flower and just repeat ‘This is beautiful”
Visualize the red color, feel its velvety touch, inhale the sweet smell.
In twenty minutes, did your mind wander? What else did you think?
Your thirst for knowledge will never allow your mind to rest. While repeating the words “This is beautiful” your mind might wander to many more such beautiful things, then maybe to ugly things, about the people you met on that day, the things they said to you, the number of times you got irritated and thoughts wander on and on….
Did it happen to you? The more knowledgable we are, the more distracted we are.
What do I talk about twenty minutes? Even if your mind was still for just two minutes it will be a miracle.
While reading this two-minute post, were you able to keep your thoughts on this post alone?
What else were you thinking while reading this post.??
Want to share???

Wednesday 4 January 2012

My Spiritual Guru is in Mumbai this week

Normally I am a late riser but I do wake up early sometimes if the duty or the interest beckons, and this time it was the latter. Like every year, this year too I had family staying at my place, during Babaji’s visit,  who would be attending Satsang all three days, but since the distance is too far (at Bayender)  and me with a weak body, I was to attend only one special one on Sunday which is hosted by Babaji, My Spiritual Guru.

That meant sleeping early at night to wake up early the next day. But New Year eve program on TV was distracting, so while the rest of the family went off to sleep by 10pm, I stayed late night watching the TV program at Star Plus Channel as we saw the change from year2011 to the year2012.

I was too drowsy to wake up at 5am on 1st day of the year2012, but the activity of my guests drinking tea/spiritual discussions/bathing etc woke from my slumber and I was ready by 6am.

We reached the venue at Bayender by 7am, and struggled in long queues to get inside the compound. Although the hall was empty inside, there were long queues at every entrance and lots of commotion outside by the people who believe in cutting queues. The stronger and influential ones always have easy way out while the rest wait patiently for their turn.

Anyways, I found a chair facing a big screen and waited for 2 hours, till it was time for discourse.

Babaji began his discourse at 9:30am and the Satsang lasted for 90 minutes, the message was mainly introspection on the things that we do and is it proper to act the way we do. There were many questions asked on behavior and attitude, which many devotees could identify. Happy to share his message with those who were unable to attend the discourse on 1st January 2012:

The topic was 'come out of darkness and get enlightened to find the truth' 

What is the purpose of life and how do we fulfill it?  We must try to understand the depth of this message and try to understand what does that darkness mean? The darkness mentioned here is not the one where you cannot see, you stumble and fall, but darkness of knowledge where you cannot see the truth.

Today everybody is wishing each other ‘Happy New Year’. We say 'Happy New year to everybody but if we don't practice the right methods to be happy how can we be happy? Just words don't suffice; if we wish to be happy then we have to make it happy. Let us ask ourselves what is there in this world to be so happy about it? We are actually reminding each to make the year a happy one!

So how do we find happiness? Money? Status? Family?  Think again, only when we have His grace, can we find happiness.

When there is hunger for knowledge then we can see the light.

To show our love for our Lord, we waste our time going to holy places, temples, shrine, but where is your Lord? These are just illusions.

If you love something you have to go and find it there, but if you are looking in wrong places then how will you find it? Everything that we do, we think whether it is profitable or loss to us, we don’t do anything unless we have a selfish motive. There has to be a logical conclusion to whatever we set out to do. We have to think before we proceed towards that goal

Atma and Paratma, (soul and Lord) both are inside us but there is a wall separating the two, we need to break that wall and unite the two.

How do we achieve that?

When we are sick, we go to a doctor, he prescribes us the medicines and we get well only after we follow the prescription, go to a pharmacy, get the medicine and take the dose. There is the remedy for external illness.

But what about our internal disease called Ego?

This disease has to be treated and its prescription is also within us. If we find the medicine within us, and kill this disease then we find the Shabd and then we recognize our Lord. But this is a long procedure and the distance has been created by attachment and other vices, thus we get diverted in different directions.

We make our own interpretation of all that we read in holy books, different books have different stories but all the religions say the same thing that there is only one truth, and that truth is God. Truth cannot be changed nor it is an external thing.

In Gurubhani it is explained that Spiritual Guru is just a physical body, The journey just begins with body, He is just the medium for reaching the truth. Only humans can make us understand, plants cannot, nor the rocks nor the animals. Only human can guide a human, to understand the message, to be alert in seeing that light and that sound. We don’t have to choose the Guru, all spiritual Guru’s are the messengers of God who have same goal of showing the path, with only difference being in their way of explaining and in our power of absorbing. We should not limit our self to external form but delve inside through our devotion and recognize the truth.

The biggest Seva is 'Naam ki Kamai', but we are happy with Seva (service) of external kind. Unless there is no proper atmosphere, we cannot attain anything. That is why we need to recognize real Seva, real Satsang and real Darshan.

So what is Darshan?

Darshan is not just staring at the face of your spiritual Guru. It is deep concentration to something more internal, so much so, that every other awareness is dimmed. Have you seen the love of a mother for her child? A mother will be so engrossed with the activity of her child that she might not even hear a telephone bell.

Such is the helplessness of love, when one can see nothing but the Truth and that is the true Darshan. Since we don’t understand all these things we live in darkness.

We live in darkness hence we light lamps and agarbattis to dispel the darkness. 

But what about removing the darkness of our mind? 

Only when we remove the darkness from our mind, we can connect with the light of knowledge. Spiritual Guru helps us to dispel that darkness, he is there to guide us to the proper path.

When we buy a new computer, what do we do?

It has a blank memory; we program it, whatever is the input, the resulting output we get. If you wish to delete files from your computer, you have first to scan everything before deleting, separating the important files, so that we can remove all the unnecessary files. We have to be systematic to get the best results.

Similarly, whatever you get is what you deserve. If you do devotion, you will get the results. We just have to input  the Name of our Lord, that is why we have to do Simran(meditation), because with Simran you clean your system,. We don’t wish to be entangled with unnecessary things; we have to identify what influences us and delete useless things by meditation.

There is a tourist spot a Lucknow called ‘BhoolBuliya, which is like a concrete maze where one can get lost if he is not guided properly, to find a way out, one has to distinguish some valid points.

At every stage of our life we need a Guru, a guide.

A child does not say “let me learn on my own”, he needs his mother to help him with his first step, when he grows up to go to school, he needs teacher, when he starts working he needs the guidance from his boss, thus he need support all his life, a guidance to move in this maze of life so that he does not get lost in this ‘BhoolBuliya’

We can travel the world and stay in strange places but we will always be second class citizens, we cannot find the Truth is strange places, its only when we reach our own town, when we reach our own true home, do we find peace when Atma and Paramatma meet.

But we complain that we have no time.

You have time to stand for hours in front of the mirror adjusting your head gear(pagri), decorating yourself, going to salon, parties, social gathering, but you have no time for your Lord? How would you feel if your child said that he has no time for you?  We need our child to sit with us, spend some time with us and make us happy. We advise our children to keep good company because he is likely to pick up the qualities of his peers.  Don’t you wish that your children listen to you? If we don’t fulfill our duty towards our Lord, how can we expect Him to protect us and give us his grace by guiding us towards Truth within us? If we disobey our Lord by giving excuses then how will we reach God? If we get entangled with worldly things how will we free ourselves?

After many million rebirths, we have finally achieved a human form and if we don’t utilize this human form then we know not when we get this human form again.

There is much too much pain and suffering in other reincarnation and they, the lower species, have no powers to protect themselves. Have you not seen the horse being whipped harshly and the horse cannot protest? or a worm being crushed under feet for no fault of his?  Would you like to be reincarnated to that lower species? Human form is the top of the creation, the only form when you can realize God by devotion and meditation. While you have the superior human form, in which you can find Lord, do your meditation, it’s the only form where you can find Truth.

We should not worship out of fear, we should worship out of love for our God.

Many people worship snake, giving it milk, joining hands, trying to make friendship thinking that it will not bite if you butter it. They are afraid that it might bite if not worshipped. Man finds the easy way out by showing external devotion, praying so that Gods are not angry with him, thinking that he has done his duty but this is not enough. You don’t become chef by reading cook books, you don’t get driving license by just reading instructions, you have to practice to perfect your art, no books can help you perfect your skills.

Saint Paul says:”I die daily, that which is born from flesh to flesh and other which is born from spirit to spirit, to enter the gates of heaven, only to die a royal death.

We listen to our Guru only in his presence and forget as soon as he is gone. The way to meditation is to close all the nine apertures of our body and bring the concentration on the 10th door which is here, at the eye center, when he tastes the nectar at the 10th door and hears the sweet music, he will see the light of Truth and he will find the divine happiness.

Going for a satsang is not just to give attendance, it is a place to absorb the message, if you cannot absorb what is preached at the satsang,

Then what is the use of going for spiritual meetings?

There is no shortage of people attending satsang/temple but if they are not attentive than what is the use? Spiritual Guru is not interested in quantity of people attending his satsang, he is only interested in those who obey him and follow the path that he is guiding them. He does not want people to sit in 1st standard all their life, he wants them to advance to a better stage and graduate to attain success.

A spiritual Guru wants his disciples to graduate by following a right path because without devotion and meditation there is no eternal peace and happiness and he will continue to live in darkness.

Friday 8 January 2010

Babaji’s Visit to Mumbai in January 2010

Babaji – The Master, Gurinder Singh Dhillon - was in Mumbai this week. The satsang is held very far from the city, at Bhayander, and of million people attending the discourse, 75% of the people come to the venue in their own private transport. The place is well organized, with sufficient space to park the cars; there are separate lanes for cars, for buses and for trucks.

In the past, I have always gone by private transport, (in comfort, arriving just one hour before the satsang and occupying the most comfortable seat) but this year, I want to experience the common person’s way. I opted to travel by public transport and it was very inconvenient. Traveling by train in Mumbai is like being packed in a sausage can. There is not enough room for two feet; you get pushed back and forth at every station as the stream of crowd rushes in and out of the train. From Mira station to the bus stop, there was a long, slow walk of 15 minutes, people who had no patience to wait for the bus, walked for next 30 minutes through swamps and fields on a muddy road to reach the venue.

Having said that, after all that adventure at reaching the venue, listening to Babaji was a treat. Babaji spoke for just fifteen minutes in English and I was enthralled. He conveyed the message that mystics come with a purpose and it is very important for us to understand the difference between knowledge and comprehension. Knowledge is all around us and we can get it by every means. We can read a book, watch TV, and read newspaper and we get that knowledge. But what use is that knowledge to us if we cannot comprehend and put it to use? Just getting initiated is getting knowledge but we have to experience it, without experiencing it we cannot define it. If somebody is eating sugar and he tells you that sugar is sweet, how will you know what is sweet if you have never tasted it. To know the real taste, you have to taste it and experience it.

On this theme of knowledge and comprehension, I am reminded by one extract of Bhagwant Gita where it is mentioned - “Arjuna asks Krsna to reveal His splendour. Krsna gives him divine eyes with which he sees the universal Form. Arjuna is awestruck by this magnificent display. He bows down with folded hands and describes this spectacular vision.

Krsna then displays His raw power, all-devouring and fearful. Overcome with fear Arjuna asks Krsna to go back to His gentle form. Krsna shows His four-armed form, His gentle and gorgeous nature.

Krsna underscores the rare privilege earned by Arjuna. Even the gods long to see this form which cannot be seen by mere spiritual practices. But one who acts for Me, is devoted to Me and regards Me as supreme obtains Me.”

It is very important to reflect on the things that we learn, give it a thought and try to understand the true meaning of the concept, just attending endless satsangs on Sant Mat without our attention focused on the theme, will lead us to our own imaginary world.

Day accomplished, the browny point was the reward of darshan we received after the satsang when Babaji drove in his little golf car, passing through the lanes of seated devotees.

The sea of devotees headed towards canteen after satsang, which was very well organized by sevadhars, who served tasty batata-peas bhaji with bread and tea. I saw many people buy loads of bananas and biscuits to take home.

Returning back home was another nightmare, equally inconvenient. I promised myself that I would never take such trip again. I have a choice.

But what about the common person who has no choice

Featured post

The Year That It Was - 2015

I have poor memory therefore I tend to forget the good and the bad times easily. What is past is forgotten, each day I try my best that my ...

"I shall seize the fate by its throat....

"I shall seize the fate by its throat....
"I shall seize the fate by its throat....It shall certainly not bend nor crush me completely"

Out of Box

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails