Study (Swadhaya) of Good Literature

Meaning: The line of Samved 1303 gives us instruction that — "With the study of the literature which inspires men's thinking towards good deeds, men and women feel joy. Imbibing good thoughts, they ultimately get the benefit of salvation."

Message: Man's mind is like a blank paper or a slate or photographic plate. The situations, events and thoughts, which come before it, get etched on it and then that type of mental ground or mindset is created. By nature, man is neither intelligent nor foolish nor good nor bad, but in reality he is a very sensitive animal. He accepts the nearby influences and gets cast in the mould of whatever atmosphere exists before his mind. This specialty of his gets him swept in situations which either led him to downfall or to uplift. The path to uplift or progress opens up only with worship of God, satsang and 'swadhaya' or study of scriptures.

There are tow meanings of the word 'swadhaya', first is the study of Vedas and scriptures which uphold the thinking in the Vedas. The second meaning is 'swadhaya' ('swa' means self and 'adhayayan' means study, which means study or observation of the self). An individual closely observing himself daily for a few moments makes it a habit to find out personal faults and also makes an effort to remove them.

The main interpretation of the word, 'swadhaya is the study of scriptures and good books. Their study is like drinking the sweet nectar, and does the work of a beam of light in the darkness of life. The study of good moral books is the basis of man's progress, whereas the reading of bad books becomes the cause of his downfall. Good books serve a man's need of good friends and through them he finds out the road of spiritual and moral uplift. The demoniac tendencies and events encourage us to adopt man, lowly beliefs and activities. To annihilate this wicked influence, the contact of saintly, great men and the study of their books act like magic. With the study and contemplation of such books, in fact, our mind establishes a sentimental unity with that great man, by which day by day there is an enhancement in our character, personality and willpower. Good holy literature has provided the opportunity to innumerable men for uplift and to be men with strong willpower. The enunciation of the holy Gita benefited not only Arjun who was the first to hear it from Lord Krishna, but has helped millions of people in achieving their objectives of life.

Today's irony is the availability of rotten, irrelevant, obscene and perverse literature at every street-corner. People buy it for its cheap entertainment. On the contrary, one must make an effort to get only the literature with good thoughts for self-study. If we employ regularly one hour's time for study, in a short time, our thoughts will become excellent.

The habit to study must be made the daily indivisible deed of our life.

Paavamaanihi swastyayanistaabhirgachhati naandanum

Punyaanshcha bhakshaanbhakshayamrutatvum cha gachhati

(Samved 1303)

Excellent Moral character from Religion

Meaning: The line of Athervaved 17/1/29 has described about our deeds, that can be expressed as — "Human life will be safe only with good deeds and religious conduct. Therefore let us be sinless and praise worthy and always go on acquiring higher knowledge".

Message: Religiousness means religious conduct. To respect religion in every field of life to follow the injunctions of religions, is itself called 'dharma-achaaran' (or religious conduct).'Dharma' not only means religion (as regards spiritual science and worship), but it has several other meaning including 'moral duty', but unfortunately politicians and the so-called intellectuals are twisting the interpretation of the word 'dharma' to suit their selfish ends.

In reality religion is beneficial to man in every field. The question of narrowness does not at all arise in religion. In fact religion contributes to a wide and vast viewpoint. Real religion does not talk of putting blindfolds on the eyes, but enjoins us to remove them. No religion produces jealousy, malice and such perversities. Religion in the real moral sense creates an atmosphere of good thinking and love. Religion and humanity are mutually complementary. Man can never remain without religion and religion cannot remain any where except in man.

Religion means a rule for carrying out one's responsibility, in other words, 'self-accepted imposition for achieving excellence'. Every field of activity has its own 'dharma' such as teacher's dharma, student's dharma, people's dharma, leader's dharma, soldier's dharma, servant's dharma, father's dharma, women's dharma etc. Religion does not mean mere worship or rituals. Dharma is a symbol of the entire life, because it pervades every aspect of life.

Dharma is good activities, good deeds and truthful conduct. A dharmik man is a man of good conduct, is satisfied, quiet (at peace), disciplined and restrained. Never does he get angry, has no malice, does not ridicule others, nor disrespect others. His main qualities are mental purity, truthfulness in conduct and excellent sentiments for public-welfare. A religious man does not show off his religion. He is busy in his duties with a quiet and unselfish attitude. He relies upon excellence in thinking and simplicity in life. He always utilizes his total capacity and insight for deeds of public-welfare and removes the obstacles in the path with patience and firmness. A life of simplicity propounded the ideal of high thinking. Prosperity lays in simplicity only and in that only lies one's reputation.

To disrespect religion is like discarding humanness and acknowledging animal-ness. For animals there is no religion except fulfilling the needs of their bodies. If an animal coming in the path creates an obstacle, then to drive it away with its horns, to frighten it or to kill it (i.e. selfish survival) is the only 'dharma' of animals. Animals do not have a sense of respect, sentiments, discretion, tradition, society and culture. These exist for man only and therefore at every step in life he has to conduct himself according to the rules laid down in religion. The essence of religion lies only in obliging or helping others, mutual cooperation, compassion, and living together.

Conduct according to the rules laid down in the religion is the only basis for excellent character.

Please Value Compromise

If you can't go that extra mile, meet someone halfway. Value compromise, but don't compromise your value. Life is not a smooth journey. It should not be. It is marked by ups and downs. People and situations move in and out of life. Some are easy to handle while others are difficult to deal with. It is the difficult ones that always come to us to test out abilities of how smoothly we manage to cope with them with least resistance and friction offered in the effort.

We may not always get what we want. Does that mean we should not seek to get what we want? Or rue over the fact that what we set out to achieve is different from what we actually did?

Disagreement occurs, not so much for want of agreement as to the lack of our desire to agree. Our entrenched disinclination disposes us not to agree to something or with someone that is half as good. When we say half as good, we presuppose the half as bad already. This conflict between half as good and half as bad holds us back to arrive at a solution with regard to people and situations that are not past resolve in themselves.

When faced with people and situations caught in the patio-temporal warp, different from our own, we fall to see them in objective light. Our subjective thinking gets the better of us. As a result what's obvious to others is not so to us.

The solution to resolve a deadlocked situation or parties involved in it exists outside this warp. But for that to happen, people need to cede their stance.

This ceding of position is not acceptance of defeat or meek surrender. It is not something to be ashamed of or to feel conscious stricken about. Rather it is the brave attempt at surmounting the inflated sense of ego that comes in the way of us arriving at an agreement. It is a conscious choice.

Adoption of such a way requires us to recognize others' point of view. We can start looking for merit in others' cane only. When we presume an element of demerit in ours. For truth is never absolute. We mistakenly chase the shadow and miss the image.

Compromise is intrinsic to nature's scheme of things to avoid resistance. When a fierce wind threatens to blow away and uproot all that comes in its path, even the mighty tree, otherwise firmly standing begins to sway and bends and bows.

The fury of wind doesn't last but the submissive bending of tree manages to see it through the rough path. A blade of grass flattens itself against the swift current of water only to pop up its head when the current slackens. Nature uses this defense mechanism for survival. It also teaches us to live in harmony with one another and at peace with ourselves.

Nature provides us with the option of compromise as an effective means to achieve harmony and peace in times of personal conflict and emotional turmoil and interpersonal clash and collective wars. We only need to wake up to the idea and bring it into play to attain peace with in and outside.

It is certainly not a big price, rather welcome value addition in the objective evaluation of compromise. What are we waiting for?

Path of Moral Goodness

Meaning: The line of Rigved 1/97/3 has given us the key information about character formation. According to the line we can explain as — "Man should worship God, tread the good path but he develops grace only when he takes others on the path of worship of God and the path of moral goodness."

Message: The reason for the progress of man, compared to other animals, is only because of his socially collective attitude. His nature of mixing and helping each other has made him progress in various fields such as education, health, culture, science, architecture, etc. Marriage, family, caste sect, nation etcetera are also formed because of this tendency only. Man has understood that he can progress only by mixing and cooperating with each other, and not by remaining aloof. Similarly he can also remove his difficulties and faults.

This attitude is also necessary in the spiritual field. We may worship God, conduct ourselves according to religious rules and tread the path of moral goodness, but is life possible when all around in the society there is the pollution of bad customs, bad thinking and bad culture? Can our worship and spiritual endeavor be meaningful in such an atmosphere?

Along with increasing the spiritual wealth within us and along with the adoption of good conduct and good activities we will also have to exert for the eradication of demoniac activities. For this purpose the qualities of abnegation, restraint, service, love and helping others have to be adopted.

In the majority of men and society the collective process gets reduced because of the tremendous strength of demoniac elements and as compared to the gentleness in divinity. The real adoration of God lies only in removing this imbalance. Wicked temptations are capable enough to trap man in their net. With that, only his selfishness and ego increases and his activities for children, money and praise for the self increase. He looks only at his self-interest and does not shy away from harming others. It is well-known that gentlemen are of a quiet, peaceful and simple nature and do not like to come into conflict with wicked, demonic elements. Only because of this attitude of theirs to avoid conflict, the wicked people get encouragement. Thus they go on increasing disturbances and anarchy in the society. The gap between good and bad people widens even more. Real 'Ishwar-Bhakti' (i.e. worship of God) lies in reducing this gap, reforming the wicked persons and making them full of divine qualities. That only is called spirituality and religiousness.

The detailed structure of spirituality is made only for the purpose that all the men in the society adopt within their hearts the thoughts, trust, sentiments and culture, for reducing their individual selfishness and in becoming enthused for changing their inferiority into greatness and in trying to merge their souls with the supreme for spiritual development.

The peace and happiness of man and world is dependent only on this sentiment in his heart for collectiveness or togetherness, which inspires all to tread the path of goodness.

With that only is formed the character of the nation.

Pra yadbhandishtha eshaam

praasmaakasashcha surayaha

apa naha shoshuchagham (Rigved 1/97/3)

Of Passion and Compassion

We know what passion is hence it is not very difficult to understand what compassion may be Passion means a state of biological fever - it is hot. You are almost possessed by biological unconscious energies. You are no longer your own master, you are just a slave.

Compassion means you have transcended biology and physiology. You are no more a slave, you are master. Now you function consciously. You are not driven, pulled and pushed by unconscious forces; you can decide what you want to do with your energies. You are totally free. Then the same energy that becomes passion is transformed into compassion.

Passion is lust, compassion is love. Passion is desire; compassion is desire-less-ness. Passion is greed, compassion is sharing. Passion wants to use the other as a means; compassion respects the other as an end unto himself or herself. Passion keeps you tethered to earth, to mud and you never become a lotus. Compassion makes you a lotus. You start rising above the muddy world of desires, greed and anger. Compassion is a transformation of your energies.

Ordinarily you are scattered fragmentary. Some energy is being absorbed by your anger, some by your greed, by your lust, and so on. You are left hollow, empty.

All your energy keeps on going down the drain. When all these energies are no longer being wasted they start filling your inner lake, your inner being. You become full. A great delight arises in you. When you start overflowing you have become a Buddha and you have come upon an inexhaustible source.

Compassion is a key word, but you will understand it only if you go deep into meditation. Meditation is the key to transform passion into compassion. You will have to become more conscious. Right now you are unconscious.

We live like robots…. The more like a robot you are the better you function, the better the society feels with you - because it is a society of robots. To be awakened, alert, and conscious is dangerous. It is a society of blind people; to have eyes, to become.

Socrates says, "If you know that you don't know, that is a great beginning. Then it is possible for you to know". To be aware that "I am ignorant" creates the possibility of seeking searching in your own interiority for the truth - for your truth.

Compassion is the ultimate transformation of passion. You are in passion, but you go on thinking that you are right as you are. You go on defending yourself. And anything that disturbs your comfortable, mechanical life, you go against…

When you come to me you don't come to be awakened, you come to me so that you can dream beautiful, sweet dreams. That is your purpose in coming; that is not my purpose in being here. Once you are here you are caught. Then, slowly, slowly I start taking your dreams away. Then slowly, slowly I go on destroying your illusions. Once your illusions are dropped, your dreams shattered, a great awakening is waiting you for you - a great awakening which makes you a Buddha. And compassionate.

Learned People Never Quarrel and Gives us right Path.

Meaning: According to the line of Athervaved 3/30/4 — "The learned people never quarrel or indulge in jealousy and malice. Study of good literature is required to make man's thinking appropriate."

Message: The world is full of men with different streams of thought. Each one's method of assessing a situation, arriving at a conclusion and then acting on its basis is different. It is not at all necessary that every man's thinking is in agreement with ours and that he will act accordingly. Jealousy and malice are born out of conflicts in thinking only. What follows is criticism and counter criticism, increasing bitterness and difficulties in the road of progress. People slander each other as a result of obstinate insistence for their vain knowledge, vain pride, vain talk and falsehoods. The mind becomes malicious because of frequent slander and with repeated talking about others' bad tendencies; those very bad tendencies crop up in the slanderer also.

Spiritually inclined people must completely give up malice to make their material lives happy. Where there is malice, there is jealousy, arrogance and enmity, which create doubts and gear. It is necessary to free our hearts from malice. Love gives rise to love and despise creates despise. Only the atmosphere of love is the happy alternative of freedom from fear.

For freedom from fear and for proper organization, happiness and peace in the society, men who are always busy in their jealousies and malice, who create everywhere an atmosphere of quarrel, must be despised. Such men because of their selfishness, continuously exploit others, keep them trapped in arguments and quarrels and try to humiliate them.

Only the study of good books has the power to inspire man's thinking for treading the path beneficial to all. Men develop real knowledge and their difference of opinion gets dissolved and their thinking gets in the right direction. Through self-study the cobwebs of false thinking and false-beliefs get removed, the hunger of intelligence for proper guidance is satisfied and mental excellence gets enhanced. It develops the feeling of generous cooperation in the society, and doubts and fears are replaced by deep love and trust and the mutual feeling of brotherhood is increased. Swadhaya is like the 'kalpavruksh' (the wish granting tree in the Nepalese religious lore). Sitting under this kalvavruksh-like tree of self-study, one's desires are fulfilled, all worries are dispelled and life becomes pleasant and filled with moral simplicity. Through self-study we get the benefit of satsang (the good company) of learned men who were the ornaments of this earth. Through their books, our contact is established with them and we get a feeling that we are actually talking with them and they are solving our difficulties and showing us the right path.

Just like our daily prayers, we must also include self-study in our daily routine. This is the key formula for every individual to walk in the righteous path…..

Pleasantness in Speech, dealing and Action

Meaning: According to Athervaved 1/34/3 — "All people love him whose speech, dealings and actions re pleasant. Only they do good deeds and oblige others in the world whose nature is pleasant."

Message: Pleasantness, gentleness and humility are the characteristics of excellent men. As against that, people of mean activities are always hard and of harsh speech. Generous people, with a tendency to help others, are also very polite. Just as the fruit-laden branches of a tree hang downwards, clouds filled with water come downwards, similarly those who are excellent and obliging they are not proud of their wealth or luxuries and are always polite. One in whose heart there is the feeling of divine spirituality for every life; his dealings are also polite and pleasant. He always makes an effort not to cause pain or unhappiness to anyone.

Many people have that false belief that harsh behavior or harsh is more impressive and gives an impression about their greatness. But if we give it a little thought, and experiment a little, then we find out that instead of harsh words, sweet and pleasant words influence more. There is very great capacity in pleasantness. Only because of the lack of capacity and self-confidence, people use harsh words and try to cover up their defects by falsely accusing others. People who are untruthful and who possess false beliefs get joy and fulfillment in obscene and harsh speech. Unfortunately today harshness and obscenity are getting into literature also. Harsh words influence somewhat temporarily, people may obey such words out of fear, but behind their back, speak ill of them. Although people get their work done with harsh words and egoistically move around in a vulgar manner, they are not able to understand that their respect has been undermined. No doubt, harsh words are occasionally necessary. Sometimes we have to resort to harshness to bring children, those working under us or bad men, on the good path, but the use of harsh words should be with discretion.

Gentleness does not mean weakness. To say 'yes' to whatever the other person says, sycophancy and cleverness cannot be termed pleasantness. It is worth observing the pleasantness and humility when people come to request for vote or for donations, but anyone can understand how much truth lies in it! A thug and hypocrite also use very sweet language, but can we really call it pleasantness?

Real pleasantness lies in conduct, not only in speech. We find the ideal of pleasantness in the character of Shri Krishna, the incarnation of God. Whether it is play as a child, or raasleela (dancing), recalling childhood lovingly with Sudama or battlefield, political negotiations or the use of 'sudarshan chakra' (the ultimate weapon), we find everywhere a harmonious blend of pleasantness and harshness. He is pleasant In all respects hence the Sanskrit couplet from Madhurashtaka:

Vachanam madhuram, charitam madhurum, vasanam madhuram, lalitam madhuram, chalitam madhuram, bhramitam madhuram, madhuradhipate rakhilam madhuram.