Gospel | Chapter 7: Dec 14, 1882 (Part 3) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

This verse which we chant traditionally just before reading the Gospel of Srirama Krishna, this was actually the verse included from the Bhagavatam by M, the one who compiled the Gospel of Srirama Krishna in Bengali, Sri Srirama Krishna Kathamrita. So he selected it from the Gopi Gita in the Bhagavatam. Why I mention this is that in a recent talk at the Institute of Culture in Gold Park, the philosopher Arindam Chakravarti, he made an interesting observation. He said, till now we have all heard in Vedanta, the study of Vedanta, the foundation of Vedanta, the textual foundation of Vedanta is threefold. The Upanishads called the Shruti Prasthana which literally means the Vedic foundation of Vedanta. There is the source texts of Vedanta. Second, the Bhagavad Gita, it is technically called the Smriti Prasthana which means the Smriti Foundation. The Smritis are more like applications. The Shruti is revelation, highest truths which were seen by sages, they put it down in the Upanishads. How do you do, what do you do with that in life? Gita talks about it, practical spirituality. And then there is the philosophical side of it called Nyaya Prasthana which is the logical side of it. The text there is the Brahma Sutras, the Sutras on Brahman. So this everybody knows, when you study Vedanta the foundational texts are these three. The collection of texts called the Upanishads, Shruti Prasthana. The text called the Bhagavad Gita, Smriti Prasthana. And the text called the Brahma Sutras, Nyaya Prasthana. Everybody knows Prasthana Treya, triple foundations of Vedanta. But what he added new this time is Professor Arindam Chakravarty. He said we will add a fourth one, a fourth foundation for Vedanta. He called it the Rasa Prasthana, Rasa means sweetness, joy, the syrup, the candy, the sweet part of spirituality which is the Bhagavatam. He said we can consider the Bhagavatam which talks about the incarnations of God, especially famous for the stories of Krishna. And it's a wonderful mixture of devotion and knowledge. It's not considered a foundational text of Vedanta in the tradition. But he wanted to say that it should be. And so he said from now on let's call it a Rasa Prasthana. Rasa means literally it means syrup, it means sweetness, it means aesthetics, it means joy, beauty. So for example music and dance and art are all part of the Rasa tradition in India. So and here it's interesting that M, the author of the Gospel of Srirama Krishna, he starts this text with a quote from the Bhagavatam. So they're so called. Now we can call it the Rasa Prasthana. All right. Now we were studying in the text, the long section, 14th December 1882, 14th December 1882, the master and Vijay Goswami who was a major religious leader, reformer, part of the Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta in those days, a devotee. So we are on page 166, actually 165 at the end in my book, 166. This is about three pages into the long dialogue of Srirama Krishna. By the way this is just reading, feel free to jump in with observations, comments, raise your hand and just say what you want to say. So Vijay asks a question. This is at the bottom of page 165. I'll read a little bit and then talk about it. Vijay asks a question. What must be the bound soul's condition of mind in order to, what must it be in order to achieve liberation? Just before this Srirama Krishna was talking about the bound soul, the worldly soul, but not attracted to spiritual life and he gave some stark examples. He said, I once met a relative of Keshav Sen, 50 years old. He was playing cards as if the time had not yet come for him to think of God. Remember in those days the average lifespan was 50 or less. So 50 would be an old man. Srirama Krishna passed when he was 18, in 1886. So he was 50 years old at that time. And so I am Vivekanth often refers to him as the old man. I'm already 51. So the point being that time is flying. Death is ever coming closer. When are you going to turn to God, to spiritual life? When are you going to start thinking of the eternal? And he says he's playing cards at the age of 50. And then he gives another example. There is another characteristic of the bound soul. If you remove him from his worldly surroundings to a spiritual environment, he will pine away. The worm that grows in filth feels very happy there. It thrives in filth. It will die if you put it in a pot of rice. Which is a harsh thing to say. Which is also true. We find people who are simply not interested in any kind of spiritual. They are not interested in Vedanta. Well, they are not interested in Christian mysticism. They are not interested in Sufi mysticism. They are not interested in Buddhist meditation. Nothing. None of these things are in devotion of the Hare Rama and Krishna variety. Nothing. Nothing appeals to them. And there is something that does appeal to them. That is money and pleasure and something in the world. That's it. Nothing more than that. If you bring them to such a discussion, they will find it boring. So, Srirama Krishna, there is a funny incident in the Dakshineshva temple when Srirama Krishna is talking about spiritual matters as he did. He had visitors. A lot of people are sitting there. Two friends had come. They are sitting and listening. And then one of them is whispering to the other. Okay. When will you go? Let's go. Okay. Enough. And the other person likes the discussion. He says, let me listen a little more. Let me listen a little more. And finally, his friend has had enough. He said, all right, you listen. I'll go and wait in the boat. Remember, it was just to cross the river and come to visit Srirama Krishna. So in the Ganga, the river. So obviously, there's a boat. It's like I'll go and sit in the car. You listen and come and you. He can't bear it. He finds it boring, positively irritating to talk about these things. So that's the terribly worldly person who's happy to take him to a bar or a movie hall or whatever. He's happy. But bring him to spiritual talk or meditation center is bored out of his mind. Or little better, interested. It's fine, but only for a little bit. Okay. Enough. Now let me go back to where I was. Yes. I remember going as a kid to the ashram, nearby ashram in our town. And I loved the atmosphere of the monastery. But I used to think that is it possible to live in this kind of an atmosphere all day long and all month long and all year long and all your life? It seems too much. But it's not really. You get used to it and it's good. It turned out it was okay. So when he says these things, it says all remained silent. So they were little gathering, they became a little reflective. Okay. So we want spiritual life, but is it too much for us? So what kind of a mind should we cultivate to be enlightened, to be freed from samsara? So that's the question. Now that's the background to the question. What must be the bound souls condition of mind in order to achieve liberation? So what kind of mind should we cultivate? Master, we had read a little bit of this last time, but I'm going to read because it's relevant. Master, he can free himself from attachment to lust and gold if by the grace of God, he cultivates a spirit of strong renunciation. What is this strong renunciation? One who has only a mild spirit of renunciation says, well, all will happen in the course of time. Let me now simply repeat the name of God. But a man possessed of a strong spirit of renunciation feels restless for God as the mother feels for her own child. A man of strong renunciation seeks nothing but God. He regards the world as a deep well and feels as if he were going to be drowned in it. He looks on his relatives as venomous snakes. You can do that. Don't tell them. Especially not at Thanksgiving. Now why venomous snakes? If they were spiritual, if they were spiritually inclined, absolutely it is fine. If they're not, if they're all the time trying to drag you back into what you are not interested in, that's what he's talking about. He looks on his relatives as venomous snakes. He wants to fly from them and he does go away. He never thinks, let me first make some arrangements for my family and then I shall think of God. He has great inward resolution. We sing in the arathi in the evening we were singing. One of the phrases in the arathi which we sing, dhriranischaya manasavan. Manasavan means mind, possessing a mind. What kind of mind? Dhriranischaya, dhrirafirm, nishchaya resolution. A firm resolve, like a thunderbolt, a mind that resolves like a thunderbolt, I shall realize God. All I want is God and God only. Take a stand on that, not the world. You might say it's not true. My mind has it so mixed up, it wants so many other things. Alright, at least this much is true. I want to want God. This much is true. Alright, take a stand on that. That's good enough. As for the rest, whatever is there in my mind, I'll deal with it. With the help of God, we'll deal with it. But I want God, whoever I am, wherever I am, in whatever condition, I want God. Take a firm stand on that. Now that feeling is, it's not that we do not have that feeling. Sometimes we do, but the problem is sometimes. Not most of the time. Not all the time. One Sadhu said in Ramasubh Daschak and tell you his name. He said, who is a Sadhaka, spiritual seeker? Remember, this is in the context of India. So he says, everybody goes to the temple sometime or the other. Everybody prays to God sometime or the other. Everybody listens to a bhajan, a devotional song sometime or the other. Sometime or the other, if you do that, you're not a spiritual seeker. One has to be a consistent spiritual seeker. I am moving towards something. Who is a student? Not somebody who reads a book once in a while. Sometime or the other. No. You have a regular course of studying which you are pursuing systematically towards a certain goal. Then you're a student. So this consistent spiritual seeking, it requires resolve. Resolve. Dhrirav Nishchaya Maana, so on. Siddhama Krishna is described in that arati, in the song which we sing every day. Very interesting quality of tremendous resolve. And if you see his life and the life of Vivekananda, Mahasarada or the monastic disciples of Siddhama Krishna, they share this one thing in common. They were a very diverse bunch of people. But they had this one thing in common. They were tremendously determined. We will find God. We will realize God. We will hold on to God in this life and nothing else matters. It's a quality. It's a blessed quality. And people who have been successful all their life, they have had it in this quality. Right here, the famous example, Edison. Edison had his laboratory here in New Jersey. So there are so many stories we read about him. For example, in his quest to find the perfect filament for the light bulb, he said to have failed thousands of times. I've come across different numbers. 20,000 experiments failed. One number, 10,000 experiments failed. But the interesting thing is he failed this much assured. He failed thousands of times. Thousands of times. And there are two interesting quotes. When he had failed 10,000 times or whatever, he said, I don't look at it as 10,000 failures. Now I know 10,000 ways of not making a light bulb, a filament for light bulb. When his laboratory burned up at one time, it did. It was a famous incident. When it burned up, he rushed to see all his work of years, decades going up in flames. And his son ran behind him, trying to put out the flames. And his son was shocked. His son writes that I've looked at the old man and all his life's work going up in flames. That's what he was all about. And I looked at his face in the light of the flickering flames. He was calm. And his only reaction was that, well, there go all my mistakes. They've been burnt up. All the mistakes have been burnt up. And he writes that he had a strange look on his face as he looked at his whole life's work burning down. And he says, go call your mother. She has never seen a fire like this. I don't know the exact words, but it's a famous quote from Edison. It says, the formula for success. It says that the way to success, which I know is after all your failures, try one more time. That's the surefire way of success, way to success. Anyway, the resolve, not giving up. You could have failed. We wouldn't have light bulbs. That's all right. But the resolve was there. It's not a question of success. He's going to do it. I know this professor whose talk I attended at Harvard in the science auditorium there, Steinhardt, the name of the book is the second kind of impossible. He was searching for a particular crystal. And he gave a talk of how he searched for 30 years to find a particular kind of crystal. The book is about that. So after the talk, I asked him, in the Q&A, I asked him, you know, you've worked with Nobel laureates. You've worked with researchers on the top of your field all your life. What's the one psychological factor which he would say is common to success in such, you know, cutting edge endeavors at the cutting edge of science? He said to me, did you not hear what I said? This is 30 years. I've been searching for the answer to one question. And then he pointed. I still remember. I think it's on YouTube also you can see. You can see me with a little flash of orange in the audience. But you can see him also. So he is saying that answer. Did you not hear what I said? Search for these, I don't know, how many, 20 or 30 years for an answer to that question? Then he pointed to the wall of the auditorium. He said, to find an answer to my research question, I'm willing to go through that wall to find it. So you see that resolve, the tremendous focus. I mean, with its knowledge, I was just thinking, go to Wall Street here. See the tremendous amount of focus people have for earning money. All those young people with MBAs and all day and night, money, money, money, focus. Tremendous focus. Resolve. You go to what is the famous music school here? The Joliar. Yeah, sometimes we walk past that and see all these little kids. Then usually it's the moms who are bringing them there. But how much hard work goes into it? To learn to sing or to play an instrument. Years and years of hard work. I'm not going below that because the search for pleasure or being addicted to a drug, that is not resolved. Already one is being sucked forward by some kind of addiction or pleasure. But anything higher, its art or knowledge or research, all of that entirely worldly, but that takes tremendous resolve. And this resolve in spiritual life is very, very important. Resolve to do what? To do what? To have this kind of a mind that I want God and not the world because our natural instinct is to flow towards the world. And that is like rowing a boat which is anchored to the shore. The boat is anchored to the shore no matter how much we row, it's all in vain. So pulling up the anchor, floating the boat on the water, letting go of our worldly attachments and that has to be done with resolve. The dead bury the dead. You are going towards God. The world will take care of itself. God will take care of the world. We don't have to worry about it. Here he says that he never thinks, let me make some arrangements for my family and then I shall think of God. He has great inward resolution, tremendous inward resolution. This makes meditation and prayer much more effective. If inwardly, I say enough, inwardly, very strongly. No longer the search for sensuous pleasure. No longer this endless involvement with money and property. No longer this involvement, this kind of delusion. Husband, wife, father, mother, children, especially children, grandchildren. Do whatever you have to do but minimal. Step back. I am now engaged in the greatest of human adventures, the search for God. So I have to clear the decks for action. Inwardly, step back. The monk steps back actually externally. No more connection with father, mother, brother and sister, husband, wife. If the monk, they were married, children, grandchildren, no. Cut it off completely. No more connection with property. No more connection with possessions. No more connection with politics and society. It's not at all in the politically correct worldview, especially in this country. It's a Protestant country, very much engaged in the world. No. Step back. One point. I want God and God alone. So the monk does that, steps away from it. And those who are not monks, they also do that. Ram Krishna says, inner renunciation, external renunciation. The monk has to do the inner renunciation and the external renunciation. And everybody, whether monk or not a monk, they have to do the inner renunciation. Otherwise, spiritual life, there's no power behind it. The inner renunciation, externally, one may be in the middle of the world doing one's duty, one's activities, spiritualizing it, like Arjuna was advised by Sri Krishna. But internally, the inner renunciation must be clear, diamond sharp and with tremendous resolution, whether it's for a monk or for a householder, man, woman, whoever, old, young, this inner renunciation with tremendous resolution. And renew that renunciation. Renew that resolution every day, day by day. So this is, the question was asked, all right, I feel I am bound in the world. In what kind of mind do I need to cultivate to become enlightened? This is the kind of mind. Renunciation and the renunciation backed up by tremendous resolution. Before this, something else is required. Here's the example of the man who was playing cards in his old age, quote unquote old age. It's, first of all, one has to come to this view that spiritual life is possible. Worldly life is in itself not satisfying. There is no ultimate solution to my quest in worldly life. It's ever changing, full of ultimately a mature point of view will see that there is deep unhappiness in worldly life. We are never safe in worldly life. We are always vulnerable to deep suffering in worldly life. So we are, and also all the time, unfulfilled, unfulfilled. So fulfillment, safety from suffering, transcendence of worldliness, all of this is possible. This is called spiritual life. This is the core of all religions in the world. However different they are, whatever paths they take. So this one first has to come to this view. This is step one in spiritual life. Buddhism calls it dhrishti, samyaktrishti, the proper view, the spiritual view of life. Then second one decides, I've got the view. The next step is I'll do something about it. I'll do something about it. Buddhism calls it samyaksankalpa. Sankalpa means the resolve to something. And then Sriram Krishna here says, and that resolve has to be backed up with, you know, renunciation, strong resolve, strong renunciation. I'll do something about it. Not something, this is the goal. Otherwise it will become like, as he said, alright, I'll be spiritual, but there are lots of things to do first. And spirituality is a long game, you know. So let's make a small beginning, like a piggy bank, I put a dollar in it and it will build up over time. Well, over time, God has got plenty of time. Take your time, multiple lifetimes ahead of you, take your time. If you're exposing yourself to great risk, great suffering, great unhappiness, if we knew the kind of danger we are in, if we knew the preciousness of this opportunity, we would be much more up and doing. So he gives us a story. Sriram Krishna tells us a story. Let me tell you a story about strong renunciation. At one time, there was a drought in a certain part of the country. The farmers began to cut long channels to bring water to their fields. One farmer was stubbornly determined. He took a vow that he would not stop digging until the channel connected his field with the river. He said to work. The time came for his bath and his wife sent their daughter to him with oil. Father said the girl, it is already late, rub your body with oil