46 Maxims continued...
31. Try, as far as possible within your means, to satisfy the needs of the poor, who are really God as poverty. Share with them whatever food you have and make them happy at least at that moment.
32. Whatever you feel should not be done to you by others, avoid doing such to others.
33. For faults and sins committed in ignorance, repent sincerely and try not to repeat them. Pray to God to bless you with the strength and courage needed to stick to the right path.
34. Don’t allow anything to come near you that will destroy your eagerness and enthusiasm for God. Want of eagerness will cause the decay of the strength of people.
35. Don’t yield to cowardice; don’t give up bliss (ananda).
36. Don’t get swelled up when people praise you; don’t feel dejected when people blame you.
37. If anyone among your friends hates another and starts a quarrel, don’t attempt to inflame them more and make them hate each other more; instead, try, with love and sympathy, to restore their former friendship.
38. Instead of searching for others’ faults, search for your own, uproot them, and throw them off. It is enough if you search and discover one fault of yours — that is better than discovering tens of hundreds of faults in others.
39. Even if you can’t or won’t do any good deed, don’t conceive or carry out any bad deed.
40. Whatever people may say about the faults that you know are not in you, don’t feel for it. As for the faults that are in you, try to correct them yourself, even before others point them out to you. Don’t harbour anger or bitterness against people who point out your faults; don’t retort, pointing out their faults, but show your gratitude to them. Trying to discover their faults is a greater mistake on your part. It is good for you to know your faults; it is no good for you to know others’ faults.
41. Whenever you get a little leisure, don’t spend it in talking about all and sundry, but utilise it in meditating on God or in doing service to others.
42. The Lord is understood only by the devotee; the devotee is understood only by the Lord. Others cannot understand them. So don’t discuss matters relating to the Lord with those who have no devotion. Such discussion will diminish your devotion.
43. If anyone speaks to you on any subject, having understood it wrongly, don’t think of other wrong notions that will support that stand but grasp only the good and the sweet in what was said. True meaning is to be appreciated as desirable, not wrong meaning or many meanings, which give no meaning at all and cause only the hampering of bliss (ananda).
44. If you desire to cultivate one-pointedness, don’t, when in a crowd or bazaar, scatter your vision to the four corners and on everything, but see only the road in front of you, just enough to avoid accidents to yourself. One-pointedness will become rmer if you move about without taking your attention off the road, if you avoiding dangers, and if you don’t cast your eyes on others’ forms.
45. Give up all doubts regarding the guru and God. If your worldly desires don’t get ful lled, don’t blame it on your devotion, for there is no relationship between such desires and devotion to God. These worldly desires have to be given up some day; feelings of devotion (bhakthi) have to be acquired some day. Be rmly convinced of this.
46. If your meditation (dhyana) or soft prayer (japa) doesn’t progress properly or if the desires you have en- tertained don’t come to fruition, don’t get dispirited with God. It will dispirit you even more and you will lose the peace, however small or big, that you might have earned. During meditation and soft prayer, you should not be dispirited, desperate, or discouraged. When such feelings come, take it that it is the fault of your spiritual exercises and endeavour to do them correctly.
You can easily attain the divine principle only when you automatically behave and act in this manner and along these lines, in your daily conduct and in all actions. Therefore, hold on to these maxims rmly. Chew and digest these spoken sweets, which have been distributed on the birthday festival of your Swami, and be happy! Have you understood?
Devotee: Your words are like divine nectar, Swami. Yes! Divine nectar! In all these ordinary dealings of life, people does not know the road; they follow the wrong track; and there are no books to tell them the means of a happy journey. For all such strugglers like me, what you have said is the very breath! We are indeed blessed! Bless me, that these words get imprinted on my heart and are realised in practice every day. There is no good in simply listening to or reading them. It is only when Your grace accompanies them that we get strength. I shall take leave, Swami!
Dear All,
We will pick up some gems from the 46 maxims given by Swami and deal with them in the next post(s).
Love.
