Swami Shivapadananda

Swami Shivapadananda Puri speaks on faith and attachment (audio) - 12mins (Mouse-over the grey bar below to play)

In this excerpt from a talk, Swami Shivapadananda Puri speaks of faith as "inspiration". He elaborates on the thought by highlighting attachment to worldy objects (impermanent) and love for God (permanent).

We love the wrong thing

[Pictured: A rope that could be mistaken for a snake]

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]

[now a Centre of the international Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission]

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 972

Vashishtha Muni [one of the seven - Sapta Rishis - Sage-Seer-saints] says to [Lord] Rama, 'O Rama listen to those words which are conducive to the highest good'. To the highest good. The words are…[Swamiji reads in Hindi]…listen to those words that are conducive to the highest good. What is that? [Swamiji reads in Hindi again]…all this that you have spread out, know this not to be the permanent. This is not the permanent.

That is why your mind is now oscillating. Because everything you do is like a sandcastle, it comes down. Wives come down, husbands come down, money comes down. Nothing is permanent. It is the equivalent to lies. How is it? What is this impermanence? How do these lies appear to be? It's just like in a desert you see water – a mirage. You yourself admitted that this world seems like a dream. That comes through great grace [kripa] - but it can be lost again because you'll keep indulging the other [worldly or sensual] side. But nevertheless you got a taste. One time the taste is distasteful [vairagya, dispassion] – it'll grow. How is it? It's like a mirage in a desert.

Swamiji translating: Without the knowledge that this is all a mirage, that this is all impermanent, great difficulties come. What kind of great difficulties? Worries are the greatest difficulty. Great difficulties come because you base your work on wrong values. When the value is wrong then you always go wrong. If the value is right then you will always work towards the right thing. So the value from the beginning is wrong. You try to capture your own shadow, thinking your shadow is everything. The value is wrong. When the sun goes down, darkness will merge in darkness. You'll look for your shadow in the darkness and you won't find it because you'll be bumping into tables and chairs [obstacles].

Swamiji reads in Hindi again and translates: How is it? In a dream you are alone but you see the whole universe and its masses in there. It is just like that. This is the same.

Swamiji translating: Know that mind which is identified with the soul is creating all this. Remove the soul, the mind cannot create. You haven't seen a dead fellow get up and say, 'I dreamt'. He's dead. So just as it is created in dream, here too it is. This is the knowledge.

Parabrahman, the supreme Being - ponder over that word, 'Being' - that Being has somehow, with Its own Maya [the divine power of delusion/illusion], 'apparently' divided Itself into names and forms. Names and forms.

Imagine someone made a beautiful vase. Look at it nicely. Now, what do you call what you put on the floor? Tiles….beautiful tiles. You are separating that vase from the tiles and the tiles from other things. But in reality all these are clay, no so? It is the clay that has taken all these forms. It is Brahman [the one universal consciousness] that has taken all these names and forms. And because of the difference in names and forms, inside here Itself, it is enjoying Itself from one to the other.

Don't ask the question, 'How did it happen?' It happened. But, if you just know how to look upon the names and forms by looking at the soul in them from the beginning. Like you look at your child - from the beginning if you don't think your child is the body, then when the child leaves that body, you won't be that sad. Because you'll know that which was the child never died. From the beginning you identify and say that the body is your child. But the body is not your child. It's a piece of clay.

Catch hold of that. You like the man. But you don't like the man. You like that which is in that body. If someone brought me a box with a diamond I'll hold that box and sit day and night. And then someone takes the diamond [out of the box] and runs away. I'm holding the box and one day I open it and what happened to the diamond? But all the time I was loving the diamond - not the box. So you're loving the body of the child. It's not right. Love that diamond inside – the soul. Same with our wife and husband and children and brothers and sisters and relatives – they must go. The box has to go.

Then again he says, Brahman takes these names and forms. It is still Brahman. The [Christian] Bible also says that. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and it became flesh. Flesh – but it's still God. It became flesh but it's still God. The clay became a pot but it is still clay. Know that. This whole world is still Brahman. But what's making you not see Brahman is because you are attached to that particular name and a particular form. Think about it. This is knowledge, not bhakti [devotion, love] now, it needs some sort of intelligence, intellect [buddhi], to discriminate. All these names and forms the Lord has taken but what happened…[Swamiji translates again]…looking at it like you're seeing a snake. Superimposing it onto a rope.[See picture at top of blog] But if you look at it with knowledge - you shine a torch on it – you find there's no snake, it's always rope.

In reality there's no world. It's only one thing. Gee-Oh-Dee. GOD. It has always been and it will always be. But you in the meantime have forgotten that. Don't ask me how you forgot it. You forgot. Think about it. That's why I'm waiting for you to think.

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time. 

2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.

There are currently available, 150 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. 

For more about the Holy Trinity, and also the founding Swamis of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, please mouse over their names below:

Sri Ramakrishna    Sri Sarada Devi     Swami Vivekananda  

Swami Nischalananda  Swami Shivapadananda 

 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online

Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:

Ramakrishna Math and Mission    Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa    Ramakrishna Dham

Discerning with heart vs. mind

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 808

Please don't ever try, with your 'stethoscopes' [medical instrument used to listen to the heartbeat], to study the behaviour of a Paramahamsa or a man with steady intellect - you can't. What the eye [brain or mind] beholds is not always the truth - but what the heart beholds must be the truth.

A verse in the Bhagavad Gita [a major Hindu scripture] says: A man's intellect [buddhi] that is steady will be like an oil lamp which is in a cave. It is not disturbed - it does not waver with any wind whatsoever. Can you imagine a straight, lovely, burning flame - undisturbed by any wind whatsoever? The winds are desires, the cave is the heart - in the heart there won't be any disturbance whatsoever.

The holy man will be sitting in God, he'll be walking in God and he'll be talking in God.

Mother Sarada [Devi] [pictured above] was so fond of offering food to Sri Ramakrishna. When you are going on a pilgrimage you don't carry a lot of food, do you? Especially if you are living on a diet, you carry only a little diet food. Sri Ramakrishna at that time used to have his own specialities, one of which was jalebi. Another was called rasgulla One day, when Mother was taking the food out to offer to Sri Ramakrishna, the food fell down on the floor. Now, on a pilgrimage, where are you going to get more food? So what did she do? She slowly [carefully] picked up the food that had been knocked on to the sand. One of the lady disciples asked the Holy Mother, "But what are you doing, Ma?" She said, "I want to feed the Master [Sri Ramakrishna]." The disciple said, "But you dropped this food down on the dirt." Mother replied, "Who says that? He dropped it, then he has to eat it." [Laughter] So they got the food, the little bit that was clean, and put a Tulsi [Basil] leaf and a light [dia] with it, and Master [Sri Ramakrishna] was too happy.

It shows us that Sri Ramakrishna to her, was a living Deity and that though we have to follow rules and regulations, above all there must be purity and hygienic ideas. The food fell down but she didn't give Sri Ramakrishna the sand, She only took the top. It had been on "Mother Ground [earth]" and what is "Mother Ground"? Nothing else but Himself [God].

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time. 

2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.

There are currently available, over 100 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. 

Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and teachings.

For more about the Holy Trinity, and also the founding Swamis of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, please mouse over their names below:

Sri Ramakrishna    Sri Sarada Devi     Swami Vivekananda  

Swami Nischalananda  Swami Shivapadananda 

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online

Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:

Ramakrishna Math and Mission    Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa    Ramakrishna Dham

Cutting the bonds

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

767

   

[Pravrajika] Atmaprana [The first sannyasini (Hindu nun) of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]: With knocks the bonds [of samsara, attachment, birth and death] get loosened. Is that a slow process or . . . ?

Swamiji: It depends on the intensity of you wanting to loosen yourself. You will know it is loosening up by how much more intense your mind grows to know That.

Slow process? Yes it is a slow process. Long process? It is also a long process. Fast process? Yes it is. Because everything we see is mind. And each one of these minds (even the flowers and everything) is sometimes taking long, sometimes taking short. The crocodile and elephant live so long - look at the process.

Atmaprana: How is it that sometimes you may feel a loosening?

Swamiji: As long as you feel - it is not that. Once, if it is completely broken, then it is broken. But that doesn't mean if a few knots are broken that it's broken.

Gurudev [His Holiness Swami Nischalananda Puri, Swamiji's beloved Guru] used to tell me, 'Mmm, you are a great renunciate, Inder [Swamiji's pre-monastic name], hey?' I used to say, 'Yes Swamiji, what a renunciate. I have renounced.' He used to say, 'The day you renounce renunciation then you have renounced.' Do you see how the knot in the beginning was opened? And I thought, 'Well I am free.' No. You are bound.

Catch the spirit of what I am saying.

That is why I keep saying to you all: lectures are not God-realisation. Forget it. You are boosting your ego. When you lecture it must come out of utmost humility. That's a lecture. And in my life I found very few people who have really given me a lecture. In my Guru's time, he sometimes gave it to me. At other times he used to speak consciously so that others could hold onto it.

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time. 2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.

There are currently available, over 100 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and teachings.

Sri Ramakrishna    Sri Sarada Devi     Swami Vivekananda  

Swami Nischalananda  Swami Shivapadananda 

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online

Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:

Ramakrishna Math and Mission    Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa    Ramakrishna Dham

   

 

Advice to monastics

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

740

   

Swamiji gives practical advice to renunciates - nuns, monks, brahmacharis and brahmacharinis

Don't become so intimate with householders [lay devotees] that you go and sit in their houses until three o'clock in the morning. Just go for business - finish your business and get out. Show them that time is important. Show them that there is some discipline on your side. If you go there, you sit, laugh, make jokes, that's the time when everything comes down. Purposely they will put on the TV. Just refuse the TV occasionally and see how they respect you. And when they crack any jokes, stop it then and there.

When you go to a person's house ask them if there is any little difficulty in the house. Start off from there. Another thing: don't let them rely too much on you - like picking them up, bringing them and taking them. You must not do all that. But if they are hard pressed, all right, do it.

About the Branches [of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]: you must make them that independent that their independence becomes your independence later on. That is a strength added to you. But if you make them too dependent on you, and a slave, then their part of the slavery will become your part of the slavery; because you will be relying on them.

The male sannyasis [Hindu monks] must not look at the female's eyes too much and the female sannyasis [Hindu nuns] mustn't look at the male's eyes too much. You know Buddha's way of walking on the street? He watched his toes. There is a lot in what he is saying there. Male can see male. Female can see female. But if you want to watch the other person, watch their toes - God's toes - while prostrating.

Go and read the Ramayana again. Find out what Lakshman saw of Mother Sita, it will tell you there. I tell you, great spirituality lies in the feet. Even when you go to God, God is so great you don't have to worry about first seeing his face before you prostrate [bowing down to put forehead on the floor]. There's the spirituality.

If you go to houses on [religious fund-raising] collection don't think, 'Why should I sit here and do meditation?' That's not it. The idea is to spread It, spread Master's [Sri Ramakrishna's] name. How? Go and find your own money. Out of goodwill the householders are giving money. So take the money out of goodwill and give it to the printing press. Take the same literature and spread the message. I think that is very beautiful.

If you don't have means you must devise means. We are not stealing. We are doing this to get the money to spread the word. We are not saying, 'We will get this money and put it in the bank.' Putting it in the bank is selfish. Buying your own clothes is selfish. I want to drum this into your head.

What is this business of thinking that money is evil? Money is not evil. Money is good - as long as you don't take it for yourself. Sannyasis [monks, renunciates] must never take money and bank it for themselves. Brahmacharis [student, aspirant monks] also must not do this. Just remember this.

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time. 2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.

There are currently available, over 100 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and teachings.

Sri Ramakrishna    Sri Sarada Devi     Swami Vivekananda  

Swami Nischalananda  Swami Shivapadananda 

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online

Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:

Ramakrishna Math and Mission    Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa    Ramakrishna Dham

 

‘Attachment’ of the Yogi

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

[2nd President and Spiritual Head: the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa]

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

739

   

Sri Ramakrishna smoked; but he didn't smoke ganja [marijuana] and so on. Now, because he smoked will you say: 'That man was evil'? He saw everybody smoking and he said to himself, 'Why should I refuse to smoke? The people that smoke will feel guilty. Let me have a couple of puffs.' But it didn't make him a slave. The yogis, in order to stay in the body, must have a thin thread of something [seeming 'attachment'] to cling onto, something that they can later snap off. So rather choose a thread that you are used to.

My thread is Shamolia [a baby at the time, now an adult with two sons and still a devoted chela - disciple]. I could have another thread [seeming 'attachment'] - but that's the best thread I can get. Having to call the world my apparent home, I am doing good to it at the same time.

Atmaprana [Pravrajika Atmaprana - the first sannyasini (nun) of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa] : What is "soma juice" as mentioned in the scriptures, Swamiji?

Swamiji: There is a symbolic meaning to everything the scriptures say. It is also a kind of juice taken from plants, a mixture that the yogis drank. But the higher philosophical meaning of soma juice is devotion, love. Soma is mind.

Atmaprana: Is it something to do with the moon?

Swamiji: Yes, mind and moon, they are the same. If you find a moon mentioned somewhere in the scriptures you must remember it is telling you about the mind.

Because Lord Shiva has a crescent moon some people say, 'Shiva has a crescent moon, he has so little mind, so small a mind.' [laughter] I say, 'No he has only exposed that much and look what is happening in the world. If he exposes the whole moon what will happen? You will misunderstand him or you will die.'

Soma is mind. The juice of the mind will be love. If you have that then you get drunk. Sri Ramakrishna said, 'I am drunk, not drunk with ordinary drink, I am drunk with my [Divine] Mother's name, "Kali, Kali". Once I take that name I am drunk.' He had soma juice.

A lot of our writers, even in India, merely take the words of the scriptures at face value.

1) Care should be taken by the reader to understand and take Swamiji's words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time. 2) Mouse-over the words highlighted in red in the posting for further explanation or links.

There are currently available, over 100 different CDs or DVDs with mp3 files, of Swamiji speaking. Please email timhoare@webmail.co.za to order. Click HERE for the second website on Swamiji's life and teachings.

Sri Ramakrishna    Sri Sarada Devi     Swami Vivekananda  

Swami Nischalananda  Swami Shivapadananda 

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna - read online

Reference websites - please mouse over the name and click to connect:

Ramakrishna Math and Mission    Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa    Ramakrishna Dham