Swami Chinmayanada Saraswati

 

  

“How can the bhakta stand apart from his sorrows?

To a devotee this is much easier than for anyone else. He is one who has already offered all of himself. He has laid at the altar of his Lord his entire being. So totally surrendered becomes his worldly and sacred personality, that not only his physical being but his ideas, his ideals, his worldly duties, even his spiritual duties come to be entirely offered at His feet. His joy is only in going on striving for Him. All worries and anxieties thereafter are His. Then on what account should he ever weep?”

 

― Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati

(Narada Bhakti Sutra)

Swami Chinmayananda

 

Swami Chinmayananda’s answer to why does a realized person work?

When one realizes the Truth, one becomes irresistibly vibrant with life. In divine spontaneity, activity gurgles through him. The physical equipment is generally too frail a reed to stand the blazing gush of love and work; therefore, such prophetic masters generally fold up in a blinding flash of brilliant service to mankind, carried on for a short duration of perhaps twenty or thirty years.

 

Your question is, “Why should he work?” Can you tell me why the Sun is illumining everything around it? Why fire is hot? Sugar sweet? Oceanic waters salty? Why birds fly? Flowers bloom? Mirrors reflect? Air moves? Earth revolves?… Are they not expressing their essential nature? Can any one of them remain without their essential property? The realized saint is not responsible for what he is doing. He is one with Life. And Life expresses itself in action.

 

Swami Chinmayananda Saraswathi

Swami Chinmayananda

Non-Injury

An important discipline, prescribed for the mental level, is non-injury (ahimsa). Ahimsa does not simply mean non-killing or non-injury at the physical level. It is to be understood as a mental attitude regarding our relationship with others. 

Non-injury is the spirit that should dominate the realm of our motives. Sometimes it is necessary that our actions be cruel although the underlying motive is totally loving and kind. Shakespeare beautifully expressed this idea in Hamlet, “I am cruel only to be kind.” 

Non-injury is not a passive ineffectual attitude. Restraining the wicked to protect the good is the very creed of every true Hindu.

Thus, non-injury as advised by the architects of the Hindu culture is a value of life to be applied at the level of our motives. Our motives should be blessed and pure without any cruelty or hatred. In the execution of a pure motive, we may have to weed out the thorny shrubs to make the garden beautiful again.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

A strong mind is cultivated by living moral values. All outer actions start gathering a dazzling polish, once your mental values change. A morally strong person spends less of his mental powers in facing the day to day problems of life....Moral values and ethical principles adopted and accepted by you must be lived fearlessly, even in the face of death....Never compromise, under any amount of pressure. You will find God's help coming to you, to pull you out from even the direst situation.

- Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

    It is not necessary to give up the objects outwardly. 

   Letting go mentally of your dependency on the object, the clinging attitude, is sufficient to create a feeling of completeness within yourself and within the moment....   Simply have the attitude:   "I don't have to have IT in order to be the WHOLE. I can Let go and still be full and complete” 

Sri Chinmayananda Saraswati

“All this world (universe) is pervaded by Me in My Unmanifest form (aspect); all beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them” ( Bhagwad Gita)

           (Bhagawad Gita)


 All this world (universe) is pervaded by Me in My Unmanifest form (aspect)

If thus, the Infinite pervades the finite what exactly is the relationship between them? Is it that the finite rose from the Infinite?

Or is it that the Infinite produced the finite? Has the Infinite Itself become the finite, as a modification of Itself or do they both keep a father-son, or master-servant relationship? 

Various religions of the world abound in such questions. The dualists can afford to indulge in such a fancied picture of some relation or other between the finite and the Infinite.

But the advaitin-s (Non-dualists) cannot accept this idea, since to them the Eternal Self alone is the one and only reality.

All beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them”

“The second line of this stanza is a classical description of this “relationless-relationship” between Real and unreal. To a hasty reader this would strike as an incomprehensible paradox expressed in a jumble of empty words.

But to one who has understood well the theory of super-imposition, this is very simple. The ghost-vision can come only the post.

And what exactly is the relationship between the ghost and the post from the standpoint of the post? The innocent post, in infinite love for the deluded fool, can only make a similar statement as the Lord has made here.

“The ghost,” the post would say “is no doubt in me, but I am not in the ghost; and therefore I have never frightened any deluded traveler at any time.” 

In the same fashion the Lord says here, “I in my unmanifest nature, am the substratum for all the manifested” chaos of names and forms, but neither in their joys nor in their sorrows, neither in their births nor in their deaths, ” am I sharing their destinies, because I do not dwell in them.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

अज्ञानतिमिरान्धस्य ज्ञानाञ्जनशालाकया

चक्षुरुन्मीलितं येन तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः

Ajnana-Timirandhasya Jnananjana-Salakaya; 

Chakshurunmilitam Yena Tasmai Sri Gurave Namah.

(Prostrations to that Guru who, by the collyrium-rod of Knowledge, opens the eyes of those who are rendered blind by the darkness of ignorance)

"The Guru is God Himself manifesting in a personal form to guide the aspirant. Grace of God takes the form of Guru. To see the Guru is to see God. The Guru is united with God. He inspires devotion in others. His presence purifies all. 

The Guru is verily a link between the individual and the Immortal. He is a being who has raised himself from this into That, and thus has a free and unhampered access to both the realms. He stands, as it were, upon the threshold of immortality; and bending down, he raises the struggling individuals with his one hand, and with the other lifts them up into the empyrean of everlasting joy and infinite Truth-Consciousness. "

(Swami Sivananda)

Dear All,

If the author has to actually justify the quote of Chinmaya above and then Chinmaya's Guru Swami Sivananda's saying given above, then a whole volume has to be written and still  the author would be falling short of vocabulary to actually describe what these masters have written.

Swami Chinamaya says - All rituals, all worships, all efforts by any person (Japa mala, sitting in the assembly hall for attending satsangh etc.) are of little use in one's spiritual upliftment  unless the aspirant is fired up with mumukshatva (intense craving for God realization) and a realized master comes to him, holds his hand and says "Run with Me" (in the path of sadhana as per Guru's instructions)

And about learning by watching Guru's actions, Guru's silence, Guru's words, only those blessed ones who have had opportunity in their lives to be in the presence of a realised Master can actually explain this inexplicable learning process otherwise.

In the earlier days when almost each child used to be sent to the Acharya, to stay in the hermitage of the Guru, the learning that the disciple used to get by observing his Guru is something which no one can describe and no one can understand. 

Sri Chinmaya has written about his experience and learning on observing Tapovan Maharaj, Swami Venkatesananda, Swami Krishnananda etc., have written in detail about their learning on watching their Guru Swami Sivananda, Muruganar has written poems after poems on his learning under the feet of Sri Ramana where the learning was totally in silence as Ramana hardly spoke on spiritual aspects explicitly.

How can Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda be left out in the list? He has written many pages in "Autobiography of Yogi" about his observing and learning from his Guru Sri Yukteswar. 

It so happens that in the hermitage of a Guru, a dozen disciples undergo training for 10 years but out of them, only one or two come out as outstanding and spread the fragrance of their learning from their Guru to the world. This is because of the tuning which Chinmaya has mentioned in his quote. 

There may be many direct disciples of Tapovan Maharaj but only Chinmaya went on to become world renowned saint. Same is the case with Sri Krishnananda or Chidananda under Swami Sivananda and so on.

Such chosen disciples, out of their prarabdha on one hand and due to their intense purushartha on the other hand, end up tuning themselves 100% to their masters and are able to grasp each and every gesture, each and every word, each word of compassion or even scolding of their Master and are able to almost peep into the heart of their Masters and grasp everything that their Master has to give to them.

There are volumes of books on Guru's contribution in Disciple's emancipation like  GURU BHAKTI YOGA by Swami Sivananda  or GURU VACHAKA KOVAI based on Sri Ramana's teachings and GURU TATTVA by Swami Sivananda and many more. 

Love.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Dear All,

The quote is complete in itself and actually needs no elaboration.

It applies in our worldly pursuits as well as our spiritual sadhana.

Often, in our spiritual sadhana, we fail to reach the state of peace/bliss and somewhere in between, we slip and get carried away from the tempting call of the glittering world.

What Acharya says above is that, let our failure not make us our lose our focus on our ultimate goal in spiritual sadhana.

Let us introspect, let us understand where, during our journey, our ego (any of the kleshas/vasana) took charge and made us slave to them and we lost the race.

Let us pray to God to give us strength not to be slave to similar ego next time and get up and march again and again towards the ONLY goal - Merging with the Source and existing as Source.

Is it not true that when we look back at our past life, we are easily able to identify where all we were wrong? 

This capacity to introspect, to identify our mistakes, to correct them - all this point out towards one thing. Only we as human beings are bestowed with the power of discrimination and it is the divine power/energy/consciousness which we say as Antaratman, which illumines our intellect and then our intellect always points out what is / was right and what is/was wrong!

Love.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Dear All,

The detachment referred by Acharya above is termed as vairagya in the path of wisdom or even dispassion.

Vairagya is the second of the 4 qualifications of a spiritual aspirant in the path of Jnana/wisdom.

The first is Viveka or discrimination between real and unreal.

Once the discrimination is made, then the second qualification of detaching from / disassociating from / dispassion about what has been identified as unreal, is the second qualification of an aspirant.

The glittering world full of objective pleasure/ temptation is all unreal. Any thing that cannot exist permanently as it exists at one point of time is unreal or ephemeral.

Only when the mind withdraws from its attraction for all unreal things in the world, can one develop more satwic qualities, can develop more focus on the object of meditation, can reduce the flow of thoughts and can ultimately hope to be be face to face with the object of meditation, i.e., can have a glimpse of inward experience of the object of meditation - God.

As Chinmaya puts it, the vairagya or detachment has to be at mental level and not at physical level. What does this mean?

A sanyasi may discard dressing, just sit with one single piece of cloth or kaupyana, may put his body to rigorous sacrifice, reduce food, reduce sleep and take up intense austerities to achieve the goal of Realization. But all his austerities at physical level may fail totally if the sanyasi happens to see a beautiful woman passing by with lustful thoughts even for a moment. His detachment has been at physical level whereas the mind is still a beast. 

On the other hand, Janaka did lead life of a king, enjoying all the pleasure of a king, lived in palace and dressed as a king but was a truly realized soul. His renunciation was at mental level and not at physical level. 

Thus, enjoying the worldly comforts itself is not a sin. All that is required is a perfect understanding at all times that these worldly attainments, woman or wealth or attire or power etc. are not our ultimate goal, nor are they permanent and valid for all times in our life. 

The real transformation is within, the real withdrawal is within, the real experience is within, the real peace or joy is always within, never ever in the outside world. This can be achieved only on withdrawing ourselves mentally from the world, at least during our sadhana/meditation, to begin with.

Love.

PS - Speaking of austerities at physical level, we take up fasting during Ekadasi, Shivaratri, take up difficult pilgrimages undergoing lot of hardships, attend akhanda bhajans sacrificing sleep etc.

All the above austerities are indeed very important and very noble ideas. 

However, the basic purpose of taking up all these hardships are to purify our mind, detach our mind from world and attach to God.  

Author recalls his childhood days when his own grand mother, fasting on vaikunta ekadasi, used to take him along with her for 2 to 3 continuous movies of Sivaji!!!!!!!!!

Any sacrifice/fasting/other hardships without focussing our mind totally on God is like taking up right thing with incomplete focus. 

A night of fasting should see the devotee totally focussed on his/her chosen God, totally detached from the world and immersing on Godly thoughts to an extent as though that night is the last night given to us for living with our Lord and after that night, we may not exist at all!

Love.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Chinmayananda Saraswati