Swami Shivapadananda

Making God your slave

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

Day 1025

Swamiji speaking on OM/AUM

The same OM means Shiva. The same Om has come in the form called?... Shiva. Shiva is also guru [Swamiji sings the line 'Om gurunatha, Siva gurunatha..'] and what kind of guru is Lord Shiva? 'Jaya gurunatha,' – he always gives you victory, or he hails [draws/calls] your soul towards him. Towards?...him. Other things chase the soul away but he hails it towards himself. And what kind of as guru is Shiva? 'Satgurunatha,' – sat means?...truth. Sattvic guru, not tamasic or rajastic guru. What kind? Sattvic guru. And wherever sattvic quality is, it is always revealing God and God alone. Where there is no sattvic quality it will remain multiple. What? Multiple…meaning more than one.

Now Radhe – Radhe is what we call Nature – Prakriti. Or the Vedantists call it Maya [God's power of illusion/delusion]. Samkhya people call it Prakriti, and the Vaishnavites or the Saivites or [Divine] Mother worshippers call it Sakti. So Radhe is that Sakti. Which Sakti? That Sakti which reveals Krishna. Which reveals?...Krishna. And what kind of sakti has Radhe got? Radhe has got the sakti which is love [bhakti]. Swamiji asks a devotee] What kind of sakti, son? [devotee answers] 'sakti of love'. Love! It's love! She binds God. She?...binds God. You can't bind God with prasad [sacramental food offerings], you can't bind God with learning, you cannot bind God by giving a lot of charity, you cannot bind God by doing a lot of katha and janda [ritual prayers and flag-raising]. But you can make God your slave – if you love him! If you?...love him. Once you love him, he becomes your?...slave!

But the devotee never considers God to be his slave. The devotee always considers that he is the slave. Meanwhile, God has become his slave. Sri Krishna Bhagawan said in the Bhagavad Gita, that 'I am seated in my devotee's heart.' Where am I seated?...in the heart. So if the heart is full of love, Radha must be there. So what part of our body is Radha? Heart. What part of our body is Radha? – heart!

When the heart reaches out, God is powerless. His intellect, which is Krishna – what happens with that? It dissolves. In love, like a block of ice dissolving in the?...ocean, so to say. Understand? So if your heart is full of love, that is Radha. And where Radha is, Krishna can't stay away. Krishna must come! Yes. Govinda Radhe. Go-vin-da. Govinda is?...Go-vinda. 'Go' is cow. The keeper of cow is?...God. And who's the cow? Pure devotees are the cows. Like Jesus Christ had the sheep [devotees]. Shiva Bhagawan had the bull. Krishna Bhagawan has the cows. And the cows are we devotees of God. Why are devotees of God classed as cows? Because if you drink cow's milk, you will have a pure mind – you will have a sattvic mind. So if you drink cow's milk you will get sattvic [balanced, harmonious] mind. Therefore have sattvic food. And if you have sattvic food, God cannot stay away from you. Not only sattvic food, but sattvic thought. Sattvic?...thought. God can never stay away.

So what the devotees must do, is keep himself pure like Radha. Radha lived only for Sri…Krishna. She didn't live for the world. She would be sitting in one place for the whole day. When she heard Krishna's flute, just like a dogs ears go up, she would be running there. Her mind was open only to God's voice. Not the voice of the?...world. Have your mind like that. Only tuned to God's voice. And what is God's voice? All the good dharma [righteous action/path] is God's voice. Any dharma that calls for doing good is God's voice. Bad thoughts will come. They're like a bird. We don't like that Mynah bird [Swamiji replicates their noisy chattering sound] – but then they fly away. The good one ['thought-bird'] comes along – I'll capture it. Huh? Capture it. Get 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, 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

Why do you love what you love?

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

Day 1021

Out of love, out of love, the whole world came, do you know? They say that up to now, the world was created out of bliss, it exists in bliss and it will end in bliss. This is what the scriptures say. Yet, we take this which came out of joy and get so much misery. Why? The understanding is not there. For that understanding I am performing certain practical things, so that I will understand the secret of love – and therefore what love is.

What man thinks is love, is a very, very, very dangerous thing. 'I love you my darling, but I must divorce you [much merriment from devotees] because I fell in love with somebody else.' Love, this is love? I want to give you the word 'love'. It only exists in word. It only exists in?...word. Because we don't understand the spirit. When you say, 'I love you,' you will not question the person. You'll do everything - die - to make the other person happy. You will do everything and die to keep the other person alive - that is love. Anything that demands even the slightest admiration is still tinged with personal motive. Therefore, a real bhakta [devotee, lover of God] will not say that 'I love God because he looks after me. I love God because he created me'.

There was once a guru [spiritual teacher/preceptor] who gave his disciples a piece of paper to write on it 'why I love God'. Each one gave their own reason. 'He created such a beautiful world', 'when I wanted work and my family was starving, I got work. Therefore I love him'. Some said, 'whenever I prayed to him he gave me what I wanted.' Others said, 'Oh I love him because he is love.' But when the teacher collected all the pieces of paper, he found one blank sheet - and all the students laughed. The teacher said, 'yet he knows the meaning of love.' [Swamiji chuckles] Because it does not know any reason why it loves. It just loves. So that kind of love we are trying to live, that kind of love we are trying to reach. Not because so and so brings me pretty flowers, that I love him. Not because he gives me a nice put-on smile, therefore I must love him. I just love him, regardless of anything else.

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

Love for love’s sake

 

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 875

   

Sri Ramakrishna says: 'If you have five children, why do you look after them? Because it is your duty'. So why does God look after me? Because it is His duty. Why does my Deity [Ishta Deva] look after me? Because it is His duty.

If I love God for God's sake, that is love. That is praise. When there is no reason why you love God, you just love Him.

It must come to the stage when you do not think, 'Why do I love God?' That is real love. As long as you are conscious that 'My God is here wherever I go' that is alright. The saints just want you to love God.

Go to the Guru [spiritual preceptor] with humility. Meditation on Shiva [or your Ishta Deva] is meditation on the Guru. Sit with your Guru, become one with your Guru.

When the soul identifies itself with the body, it forgets it is the soul, and suffers. When we identify ourselves with the body, we forget we are the soul and suffer.

If God is omnipresent [everywhere], where am I?

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

God’s love blind to faults

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

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

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

787

 

When you read the stories of the ancient bhaktas [devotees], you will find that they loved God. And among those ancient bhaktas, they didn't only love God, they also loved what God had given them in this world. But what kind of love? That kind of love, which does not know what is a fault. What is a...fault! Therefore in the modern world they use the term, 'love is blind'. What is it blind to? And yet is says that love is God's quality – is God blind? How can he have a blind quality in him? Love is enlightening.

It's like this – He's [God] blind like I'm saying to you the sun is blind to darkness. What is the sun blind to? Darkness. Meaning, plain and simple, He does not know what darkness is. If you go and ask the sun, 'look here, did you see darkness?', he'll tell you; 'Tim – it's not in my vocabulary. Did you invent that word?' Surya Bhagawan [the Sun] – he does not know what is darkness. So, love is blind, in this sense that it does not know anyone's faults. It does not look, it does not really know. If you want to call it love to be ignorant in this sense, it is ignorant. Ignorant of what? Of faults. Of what? Faults.

It is this kind of love that the bhaktas had. It is this kind of love that when the great Mirabai was tortured by her own husband, when the great Mirabai was spat upon, she dared not find fault. What did she call upon? Rather than saying, 'you're doing this, you're doing that, you are torturing me, she says 'Krishna murari, jai giridhari'. Come to me Krishna, come! Lord, come! The only thing that the bhaktas know is to call upon God in difficulties and in happiness. Only this. And in that way, torture is no torture. Pain is no pain. You must enquire because you have to answer that question yourself. It's such a subtle thing that you cannot know [understand 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.

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

Swami Shivapadananda on choosing a relationship with God

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 553

[Pictured: The first floor inside balcony of Udbodhan House, where Sri Sarada Devi the Holy Mother lived, following the mahasamadhi of Sri Ramakrishna]

   

There are different ways to worship the same God. If you give him a human form, you must treat Him as a human being though He is more mighty and more loving than you are. Because you have depicted God and understood Him in a human form, you must have a relationship with Him. You must relate to Him in a particular way. There are nine different relationships that you can have, though this was later condensed into six main ones.

These relationships are:

'I am the son and He is the Father,' as was Jesus' relationship with the Lord. [Or I am the child, She is the Mother]

'I am the mother and He is my Child,' as with Kausalya and Sri Rama.

'He is my Beloved, I love Him and He loves me,' as with Sri Radha and Sri Krishna.

'He is my Husband and I am his wife,' as with Mother Sita and Sri Rama.

'I am the servant and He is the Master,' as with Hanumanji and Sri Rama.

'He is my friend and I am his friend,' as with Arjuna and Sri Krishna.

So, you must choose one of these relationships and each day you have to make it stronger. Treat Him with sincerity, with love. Then, it is possible to pray for yourself and for others. Somebody asked me if one can pray for someone else. I said, 'Yes, it is possible. If He is a living God He must listen to your prayers and therefore you can pray for someone else.' Sri Ramakrishna prayed for the devotees, Sri Sarada Devi prayed for Her spiritual sons and Jesus the Christ prayed for the universe.

Ask God for anything you like and He will give it to you, provided you ask with faith and sincerity. If you rely on Him completely, if you surrender to Him, He must give it to you otherwise He is not a living God. But the highest thing to ask God for (and all the scriptures say this) is Divine Knowledge, knowledge of the Self, and Divine Love, to love Him completely and sincerely, this is bhakti [divine love or devotion]. Ask Him for liberation from small finite things, that you may leave all that, and love Him in all, because He is the Eternal Being.

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.

   

 

 

Swami Shivapadananda on the all-embracing nature of the Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji

Day 539

   

Swamiji continues speaking on Holy Mother [Sri Sarada Devi]

Early one morning Sri Sarada Devi had had a bath and was combing her hair on the roof of the house where she stayed. The hair was so beautiful. It was long, long, hair and she was untangling it with a comb. It seemed as if this very hair had come to sweep the ground for her bhaktas [devotees]. On a nearby building Girish [Chandra Ghosh, father of Bengali theatre] happened to come up the stairs and caught a glimpse of the blinding beauty of the Holy Mother. His heart and eyes were dazzled and he thought to himself, 'How can I see that beauty? How can I see the Holy Mother? I am not worthy.' So he put his head down and went away. Later the same Holy Mother brought him so near that, after purifying him, he served her personally.

Can you take these qualities and make them your very own? As long as you do not, so long are you guilty of not practising that which is already given and that which is already yours. Remember, any action of the Holy Mother's that you may read about is a 'speaking scripture'. It is speaking to us now, it is not sleeping like other scriptures. It is walking on the face of the Earth in the form of books, in the form of bhaktas.

The people who practise the Holy Mother's teachings forgive everybody. She Herself said, 'I am the Mother of the virtuous and I am the Mother of the sinner.' Go and read the Devi Mahatmyam or any other scripture and find one place where previous avatars[Incarnations] of the Divine Mother have said, 'I am the Mother of the sinners.' It is declared in the scripture: 'Whenever adharma [unrighteousness] comes in the form of evil people I come to destroy them and to uplift dharma.' But here Sri Sarada Devi did not say, 'I have come to destroy them,' she said, 'I will cleanse them and make them my very own. I am the Mother of the pure, I am the Mother of the virtuous and yet I am the Mother of the demon, I am the Mother of the sinner.'

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.

 

Swami Shivapadananda on Ekalavya’s example

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 476

   

The story of Ekalavya continued

Imagine if God came to you and asked you, "What do you really want?" You would say, "God I want to realise You." What if, just as God said, "Here you are, take it," your guru came and said, "I want guru dakshina, I want to make you ignorant?" Think about it. You would say, "No, no, no, I want God-realisation that is why I did all this hard work." Do you see the point?

But Ekalavya was blissful that his guru's grace was on him. What is merely shooting an arrow? He had shot Arjuna's heart through [Arjuna was jealous of his archery skill] , he had shot his guru's heart through [with love and obedience]. He still reigns supreme - more supreme even than Arjuna, his gurubhai [fellow-disiciple of the same Guru].

This is why I say that God can teach you even through nature. You do not have to turn to a guru if you have intense yearning for God. But you do not have this intense yearning so you have to learn how to increase it. This is where satsang [company of the holy] comes in and for satsang your guru is the best. You may know five thousand realised souls but the best satsang is still your guru.

Sri Ramakrishna cried and cried to God and had the realisation of the Divine Mother. She Herself became the first guru of Sri Ramakrishna. She taught him many things, even to learning about other religions and proving that they also are paths to God, that all religions are true, that all religions will take you to the Supreme Goal.

However all religions are not the same. That is what Swami Vivekananda learned. When he was in America he said that religions are like rivers that start high up in the mountains and, flowing crooked or straight, sooner or later enter the ocean called God. He said 'rivers', he did not say 'the same river'. Look at the subtlety of that. Here, Swami Vivekananda was the Rishi [Sage-Saint]. If you want to understand Sri Ramakrishna I beg you to study Swami Vivekananda's life and through Swami Vivekananda's eyes, you will see what Sri Ramakrishna is.

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.

Reference websites: Ramakrishna Math & Mission, Ramakrishna Centre of Southern Africa, Ramakrishna Dham

Swami Shivapadananda on motiveless love for God

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 460

 

Swamiji speaking about Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu:

When God's name is taken sincerely it brings about motiveless love. We read that when Chaitanya sang the Maha Mantra [literally: great mantra] even the most learned, dry intellectuals would cry and weep and roll on the ground.

People asked these learned men why they were crying and rolling about on the ground, they just said, "We don't know. We get caught in a sort of magnetic field. We don't know why we cry, we don't know why we call on God." The motiveless, pure heart of Chaitanya and his disciples caught hold of those who were not even concentrating on God - they did not even believe in Sri Krishna. Even the saivites [Shiva worshippers] and the shaktas [Divine Mother worshippers] became affected by this magnetic, pure, motiveless love for the Supreme Being - God.

Another great thing Chaitanya did was he actually showed the area in which Sri Krishna was born and performed the rasa lila. Now some people, especially the dualists, will argue that Chaitanya was not God. That may be so but God's Spirit was inside him. If the devil can get into you, why can't God get into you? When God gets into a body, that body and God are identical. If you leave a piece of iron in the fire for some time and then take it out, the iron itself will burn you. The iron becomes fire and the fire becomes iron. Incarnations like Chaitanya were in the fire of Brahman, and the knower of Brahman becomes Brahman. In that way, up to this day, Chaitanya's Maha Mantra goes on.

There are many speculations on why he gave the maha mantra as:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare,

While Lord Brahma gave it as:

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare,

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.

Either way God's name is always most powerful. What does it matter whether you say Krishna first or Rama first so long as you realise It? If Valmiki the great thief, the man with no love or devotion, could realise God by saying Mara Mara Mara [Rama in reverse] then it does not matter if we say Rama first or Krishna first. We must also remember that Chaitanya's Ishta Devata was Sri Krishna and therefore he repeated Hare Krishna first.

 

Swami Shivapadananda on the senses and sadhana

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.

Day 456

   

Now and then bhakti [devotion] will be weak, and now and then it'll be strong. But when you become like the gopis [Lord Krishna's cowherd devotees] – on hearing just one call of the flute you leave everything and run – that is parama-prema supreme devotion and ecstatic love of god]. It is prema when we hear God's voice calling us.

We have bhakti for God all right, we love God all right, but we don't love Him so intensely that we can leave everything behind and run to Him.

Devotee: Why did Ravana have ten heads?

Swamiji: It has a symbolic meaning - the ten senses. Sri Rama had one head so all the senses were converged in truth, and that truth is one head. Truth always beats that which is untruth.

If one of your senses is out of control, you know how it runs a riot in your life. But can you imagine what your position would be if all ten senses are out of control?

Here it means the ten senses were not under Ravana's control - though sometimes one was active or two were active, sometimes all were active.

Devotee: When we are too tired to do our evening sadhana [spiritual practice], what should we do?

Swamiji: Now this is a very futile question. First of all you say, "when you are too tired." How can you measure tiredness? If you can go to the lobby, if you can go to the table to eat food, if you've got time to have a few glances at the TV, then are you tired? You are not tired. But you want to leave your sadhana and give preference to something else which appears to be more important.

But the most important thing is your sadhana. You must do your sadhana to the fullest.

If you are sick or if a doctor's patient is dying or if somebody is dying on the road then you have the right to prostrate to the Lord and say, "Lord, you are in that person and you would run to his aid if you were here. Lord whatever little sadhana I did may he get the merit of that instead of me."

No compromise. You must adopt the attitude of non-compromise. A real sadhaka [spiritual aspirant, practitioner] is he who has the attitude of non-compromise with anything except God Himself.

 

Swami Shivapadananda on the power of devotion

 

SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA

DAILY READINGS

Taken from Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Day 373

 

Practise mouna [mind and speech silence]. Just sit there but do not let evil thoughts come in. Keep repeating God’s name.

 

Devotion is all you need. When Rama was in the forest, the Rishis prepared a great feast for him. But he went to the home of an outcaste woman, who tasted each fruit before she gave it to him. The priests complained and said her love was motivated. But Rama said that she was thinking only of him.

 

After Durga [symbolic form pictured above], the Divine Mother had killed Chand and Mund [two demons] everyone went to worship her. But one outcaste man was not allowed to go near her. So he sang a song:

Yes, yes, go to her, prostrate to her, all you people, go.

But if I were a Brahmin, I would offer sacrifice for you Ma.

Go all you people, go. If I were a gardener, I would offer her a garland. Go all you people, go . . . .

He went on like this and in the end she could not stand to hear her child crying like that. So she got off her tiger and came running to him and embraced him. The heart is captured this way too. It cannot get away. Where Krishna is, Radha is not always there. But where Radha is, Krishna is always there.

 

You mistake the body for That, so you only see That when you see this (i.e. Swamiji’s body). But That is present in every tree, every leaf, every stone, every person, and in the photo too. Use your imagination and see That everywhere.

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